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DULCE DOMUM 



The Burden OF THE Song. 



By BENJ. F. TAYLOR, LL.D., 

Author of "Songs of Yesterday," "Old Time Pictures," etc. 



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OFWASW^f 



CHICAGO: 

S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 

1884. 



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Copyright, 1SS3, 
By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY, 



1 KKISHT Sl LSCMAH3 I 




The Sun That Never Sets, 



New York " North Woods," 



The Captain's Drum, 



21 



Hearts and Hearths, 



A Lament for Adam, 



Don't Give up the Ship," 



Lincoln and his Psalm, 



The Two Armies, 



Rose, Lily and May Flower, 



Massachusetts Sends Greeting, 



"God Knows," - 



Thistle Sermon, 



A Birth-day, 



Rock Eyrie, 



The Flying Heralds, - 



29 

35 
39 
45 
49 
51 
55 
61 

65 
67 
72 

73 



viii . CONTENTS. 

August Lilies, - -'- - - - - -83 

Centennial Bells, ------- 87 

Two Rivers and Two Ships, ----- 95 

Old-fashioned Spring, ------ loi 

One Step More, ------- 107 

The Beauty of Death, - - - - - - 113 

The California Year, - - - - - - -119 

A Vision of Hands, ------ 125 

"And Forbid Them Not," ------ 133 

Prairie Land, ------- 135 

The Deserted Homestead, ------ 139 

The Garden Thermometer, _ - - - - 149 

The Mingling of the Nations, - - - - -151 

Welcome Home, - - - - - ' - - i55 




"Rock Evrie, hail!" - . _ 

"Maine and Alaska hand in hand, 
The sele-same hour behold in one 

A RISING and a setting SUN ! " 



Frontispiece 



Flowers, . . . _ _ _ . 

A Big "Major" OF Bears, . . - . 

A Pioneer, -..._.. 

"Ah, as fine and as clear as a sunlit vignette 
Is the office whence came The Black River Gazette," 

A "Spot" in the Wilderness, .... 

Some Wilderness Weather, - - - - 

" 'TWAS DOUBLE-DRAG AND HoLY WoRD, 

Thus saith the drum and thus the Lord," 

"For up the sweet-heart sprang and laid 
A muffling finger on the bell 
Lest the shrill steel should strike and tell," - 

•'And fingers touched and fancy woke," 

A Day-dream, .__---- 



12 

19 



31 

32 

35 



X ILL US TRA TIONS. 

"For a trinket of silver, the honey-bee's moon 
Hung low in the azure, a giet from the Lord," - - 37 

Eve's Orchard, ----38 

"On every royal jacket that he met 
He slashed a scarlet chevron good and strong," - - 41 

The Cypress Tree, .------44 

A Glimpse of the Dome, - - - - - •• 46 

"But I5ROIDERED on his Hebrew hem 

The roses glow along," . - - . _ 51 

"In Galilee some lilies hung 

Their chalices of white," ...--- 52 

"A Pilgrim Flower — a troubled sea, 

A winter WILD AND WHITE," ----- 53 

"The world takes stock in Bunker Hill 

Where Freedom put the sickle in," - - - - 59 

"What name?" asked the preacher, 

"God knows," they said. ... - . 63 

The Light-house, ..-----64 

"And then, as if the golden-head 
Were shaking up its feather-bed," - - - - 66 

"Until God's broad horizons ran, — 
The circling brotherhood of man!" - - - - 68 

"From Halloween to Christmas-tide!" - - - - 69 

'He sang. The debtor's dungeon door, 

Swung backward on its hinge of rust," - - - 70 



ILL US TRA TIONS. xi 

Poor Bron rhuddyn," .-----/ 

The post-rider of my boyhood," ---■■- 73 

'The }5Ull-dog isridges growi, and growl, 

Forever at the Herald's heel," - - - - 79 



'•On Time!" - - - - 

"A hand has put those leaves aside, 
Lo, August Lilies light the day !" 

A Mission Bell without a mission, 

"Pour out, ye goblets, far and near, 
Your grand melodious iron flood, 

"Ye blossoms of the furnace fires. 
Ye iron tulips rock and swinc;," 

The Evening Star, 



"I see a lantern boldly swinging, 
i hear its bearer bravely singing, 

November, - - - " 

Spring Workman, 

Mt. Tamalpais, - - - - 



8i 

85 

87 

89 

91 

94 



"And then in bliss the bevy sat, 

And all in concert strangely mute, 

With roasting ears we played the flute," - - 99 

A Glimpse of Spring, ------- ^°3 

"I HEAR the bees' small HUM-BOOK's DRONE," - - - IO4 

"The GREAT BLACK CAULDRON BUBBLING SLOW," - - - I05 



108 
109 
112 
119 



xii ILLrSTKATWXS. 



"WllKKK r.KlM SlKKR.V SHOWS HER TEElll," - - - - I20 

SEQIOIAS, .-.----- 121 

Hoist: OK Refige, ------- 123 

An Ofking, 1-4 

A Fakm-vakp, ..--.--- - 125 

Having, 127 

Corn, 1=9 

"Who goes there?" ------ 131 

Farmers' Medallion, ------- 137 

"And emtty as a broken heart," - - - - - i45 

The SiN-DLVL. --.----- 14^ 

Sweet Home, - 156 

"Oh, world so utterly alone!" ----- 160 



DULCE DOMUM. 



THE SUN THAT NEVP:R SETS. 



ON some long day of June take a terrestrial globe with 
all the equipments for measuring the days, the nights 
and the twilights; the route of the shadow and the sun; for 
catching Everywhere in the fine web of lines and parallels. 
Find Alaska whence Campbell's doleful wolf has been rais- 
ing its "long howl" for a life-time. You are not looking 
beyond the border where floats the Flag. You have not 
gone from home. 

Now turn the globe until x\laska is precisely at the sun- 
set-line, then cross the continent with your fore-finger to 
the coast of Maine. It is sunrise and the globe has not 
moved at all. At the same instant closing day in Alaska, 
opening day in Maine, it is one country and one sun. 

Of old, San Francisco was at the Western edge of this 
eminent domain, but now it is as far from Alaska as it is 
from the singing pines of our farthest East, and by this 
measurement in the centre of the United States. The wis- 
dom of purchasing Alaska has been doubted, but lo, its 
utility is made manifest at last. It is a spot whereon the 



2 DULCE DOMUM. 

mighty sun may halt a moment just as he makes a splendid 
lift above the woods and fields of Maine. We hear some- 
thing now and then of the British music whose 

"Morning drum beats round the world." 

I think it is a grander thing to say the Sun can never bid 
good-night to this Great Republic. 



THE SUN THAT NEVER SETS. 



I 

PACIFIC'S waters turn to wine, 
The ripe red sun is glowing down, 
With Orient pomp the gloomy pine 
Wears rubies in its plumy crown 
And shadows on its column brown. 

II. 

With click and stroke of slender oar 

The fishers time their homeward turn. 

And pulling for Aleutian shore, 

Where dusky red the watch-fires burn, 
They trail their glittering spoils astern. 

III. 

I see them slide, as petrels skim 
The glassy scallops of the deep, 

I hear their wild barbaric hymn 

Re-sung by pale-faced cliff and steep, 
As children sing themselves to sleep. 



DULCE DOMUM. 



IV. 



" Good-night " in words from loving lips, 
" Good-night, good-niglit," the girls reply, 

"Good-night" from caiion's cold eclipse, 
" Good-night " again from skiff and sky, 
And day is dead and voices die. 

V. 

The flickering sea-birds seek the crag 

In dotted lines of hazy white. 
The Outpost lowers the Stellar Flag 

Damp with the mists of sheeted night, 

A gray and ghostly Carmelite. 

VI. 

'Tis sunset on Alaska's rocks, 

Aleutian Isle and Behring's Bay, 

'Tis sunrise where Atlantic shocks 

The coast of Maine in rugged play 
And domes of forest shed the day. 

VII. 

Sunrise in Maine! The starry wing 

Takes flight at morning gun and glow, 



THE SUN THAT NEVER SETS. 

From tapering mast salutes the King 

Whose parting foot-prints plainly show 

Alaska land a breath aeo 

And burning yet like blood on snow. 




HOW STIRS MV HEART TO THIKK THIS LAND 
HOUND IN LONr. DA^■-TIME's VEi.HlW ZONE, 

MAINE AND ALASKA HAND IN HAN^, 

THE SELF SAME HOUR BEHOLDS IN ONE 
A RISING AND A SETTING SL'.N ! 



VIII. 

I hear the axemen's clock-tick beat, 
I hear the twang of breakfast horn, 

The Yankee Doodle in the street 
And Yankee Doodle in the corn; 



DULCE DOMUM. 

One day not dead, another born, 
Good-night is married to Good-morn! 

IX. 

All hail, thou Sun magnificent ; 

And hail, ye Flag and Flame well met 
From Orient to Occident ! 

These colors, O great Light, are wet 

With splendors of thy golden set 

And Yesterday is lingering yet. 

X. 

Strong as thou art and swift as strong 
It takes thee thirteen hours to march 

Grand Rounds from noon to noon along 
The azure of the Federal arch — 
Majestic sweep of boulevards. 
The realm and route of traveled stars — 
That spans, as rainbows span the showers, 
All oaks of hearts and hopes of flowers, 
As thoughts untold may thrill and throng 
One mighty syllable of song. 

XI. 

How stirs my heart to think this Land 
Bound in long day-time's yellow zone, 



THE SUX THAT NEVER SETS. 

Maine and Alaska hand in hand, 

The self-same hour beholds in one 
A rising and a setting sun ! 

XII. 

It brings my fancy to the knee 
And kindles up my soul to see 

Him play upon meridian lines 
That string the globe as harps are strung; 

To watch each fibre as it shines, 
And hear, distinct as if it rung, 
The Music of the Union flung 

From this celestial instrument. 

Perhaps an angel choir has lent 
Some Israfeel of rarest powers 

To help this harper of the Lord, 

And grandly sing, word after word : 
This land is mine, is yours, is Ours. 



DULCE DOMUM. 



'Irf^r 







THE NEW YORK "NORTH WOODS." 



BORN in a wilderness that, I am glad to write, is a 
wilderness still, but with such clearings of loveliness 
and such elegancies of life as would never be sought in 
regions where a ride of ten miles will plunge you into 
forests, with the cry of panthers and the howl of wolves to 
wake you from your "beauty sleep"; or the leafless branches 
upon a lifted head in the edge of an opening to set your 
heart off in a gallop ; or the broad tread of an oscillating 
bear to set the fallen leaves and limbs crackling like a hem- 
lock fire. It is a region that has had tragedies and love- 
makines and adventure. It has always been a realm to me 
of strange mystery, startling possibility and wonderful fasci- 
nation. I love its tangled trails, its tough climbs, its mighty 
recesses, its Druidical rocks and its endless march of woods 
towards Horicon and Champlain. It is not a desert because 
unsown, but a wilderness because everything grows and lives 
and does "at its own sweet will." Ah, a rare place to knit 
" care's ravelled sleeve," fight mosquitoes, catch fish and 
live a life of busy idleness. 



]0 DULCE DOMUM. 

It was in that Wonderland I first saw the weazened old 
printing-press. It would have done Poor Richard's heart 
good to ink it and work it and then order raisins and water 
for dinner. It is more than a century since Dr. Franklin 
stood up with a glass of Sparkling Delaware — water in his 
hand and drank "Success to printing." It was the twin of 
that wilderness monster the convivial spirit was toasting. 

Now take the great quadruple cylinder, the mingled brains 
of a thousand men, that springs to the work with arms of 
flashing steel, that snows down sheets like flakes in Northern 
winter, that strikes across the continents and shines like 
electric light from the East even unto the West. This is 
what Dr. Franklin drank to without knowing it. A century 
ago indeed ! It is a thousand years from press to Press. 



THE NORTH WOODS. 



NEW YORK, what imperial acres are these 
Where great cities in camps shed the light of their lamps 

From Atlantic to Lake like a necklace of fire, 

Constellations of homes shining clearer and nigher 
As when star-lighted waters are stirred by the breeze. 
And to think, oh, Excelsior, five millions strong 

With thy five thousand presses all playing as one, 
And thy close-printed sheets flung abroad as great fleets 

Roll their clouds of white canvas and shadow the sun 
That locked in thy breast like a Dorian song, 

Is a shaggy old wilderness growling with lairs 

Where the catamounts wail, and big "majors" of bears 
With their plantigrade feet wipe the blackberries in. 
And the lace-sifted twilights of forest begin. 

And the quick antlers lift where the quick waters drift, 
And the speckled trout flash in the crystalline cold 
All sprinkled with carmine and dusted with gold — 
Ah, what fish but a trout could the Saviour have made 
His treasurer there when the tribute was paid? — 




A lilG " MAJOl; Ol'- liEAKS. 



THE NORTH WOODS. 

That this Dukedom of wilds could be hid in the heart 
Of New York and not feel the full throb of its mart ? 







.ih??B 






A PIONEER. 



In that wilderness selvedge, a villager's Rest 

Now empty and gone, by an orchard once stood. 



14 



DULCE DOMUM. 



Where the robnis of old reared young robbers by brood, 
And beyond it a house, and the charm of the place, 

And as guiltless of stairs as a ground-sparrow's nest : 
A mossy-browed house that was eyed like a face, 

With a window each side its wide mouth of a door, 

And the print of a thumb and four fingers it bore 

On a pane'l or two, like a nobleman's crest ; 
Ah, as fine and as clear as a sun-lit vignette 
Is the office whence came iZTije i3lacfe Mlbec ©alette. 




AH, AS FINE AND AS CLEAR AS A SUN-LIT VIGNETTE 

IS THE OFFICE WHENCE CAME ThE Bi.ACK RiVER GaZETTE. 



THE NORTH WOODS. l^ 

And the editor, printer and pressman are dead, 
And the " devil " withal. I have seen their low bed 

Where the Lombardies sweep the sky clear of a cloud. 
As in life the one jacket could button them round. 
And with one hat at once they all could be crowned, 

So in death they were laid in one coffin and shroud. 

I stood in that room when a roundabout boy. 

All my pockets a jumble with jewsharp and joy, 

With small nibbles of sugar and fish-hooks and strings, 

A new Barlow knife, alley marbles and "things," 

But my heart gave a tumble and I gave a start, 

At the grim iron prince of the house of Black Art : 

At the Ethiop press with one elbow a-crook, 

And its rigid round arm and its sinister look, 

And its hand -organ crank and its fire-dogs of legs, 

And its rations of ink in a couple of kegs. 

And the eagle that caught its brass claws in the thing, 

And, made captive for life, could never take wing. 

Tallow candles stood round, lank, languid and limp. 

Too dim for an angel and too light for an imp ; 

Maps of regions of darkness benighted the place 

But it shone through the past with an exquisite grace. 

And the boy gazed about with a silent surprise 
For nothing was white but the whites of his eyes. 



1 6 DCLCE nOMUM. 

And the arm of the printer was dingy and long, 

And the arm of the pressman was shaded and strong. 

How that press came to life if I only could tell, 

But who ever drew up in the bucket the star 
That he saw as he leaned on the curb, in the well 

When the hour was high noon and the night was afar ? 

Give the roller a run and the play is begun : 
Up with frisket and tympan and on with the sheet, 
Down with frisket and tympan in regular beat, 

Then a turn at the rounce and two pulls at the bar 
And the platen comes down on the face of the page 
With its lines in relief like the wrinkles of age ; 
Then a whirl of the crank and a groan and a clank. 
And the words regimental in justified rank 

To a late resurrection reluctantly rise 

And stand before men in their eloquent guise. 

Then the sturdy-legged desk where the Editor sat 
With his hand in his hair and his mail in his hat. 
And the inkstand beplumed as with ferns in a fen 
As if he raised geese from the slip — of the pen. 
But the toil and the moil were brightened and past 
For he made a man Member of Congress at last, 
And honors were easy — the Member made ///;//. 
And he said in his heart that dipped candles were dim, 




A "spot" in the wilderness. 



17 



1 8 DULCE DOMUM. 

And he bought him a lamp, raised a " devil " to light it, 

And discovered a wrong and wrote leaders to right it. 

Oh, dear old Gazette, not good night but good morn. 

For I hear in the twang of thy carrier's horn 

The prelude to bugles right royally blown 

That proclaim for the Press an estate of its own. 

How my heart playing Hebrew reads back to the time 
When Otsego's fair vale was a magical clime ; 
Not that Cooper's creations are lingering there, 
But 'twas thence that my wonderful caravan came, 
Books of beasts and of birds in their covers of blue^ 
All the rest of the pages were read through and through — 
With the tiger in stripe and the leopard in star 
As if they had torn Freedom's banner in two, 
And the lion bewigged like a barrister's bar, 
And with H. and E. Phinney's own imprint of fame. 
All the s's are f's and the catch-words below 
To lend me a lift as I eagerly go, 
And glad as a bee in a meadow of clover 
I give them a glance, wet my thumb and turn over. 
More bliss blossomed out in those primers of old 
Than in volumes of vellum in crimson and gold. 

That imp of a press grew gigantic and grand 
And startled the world as Atlantic the strand. 
And I stood with bare brow by that triumph of art 
When the breath was turned on and the iron-clad heart 







SOME WILDERNESS WEATHER. 



19 



20 DULCE DO MUM. 

Of the ponderous press was beginning to beat 
With the regular tramp of a troop in the street, 
With the bending of springs and the flutter of wings, 
And swinging of lever and swaying of bar, 

And the running of cylinders forward and back 

With a trundle of night for the letter-paved track, 
With a murmur of might and a rumble and jar 
And the playing of pinion and tumble of wheel 
And flitter of fingers and glitter of steel. 

To and fro, up and down, over under and through, 
As steady and true the magnificent iron 
As the beat of chronometer timing Orion. 
And I thought, with no press, without pulpit or post, 

With no English, no engine, no lightning that ran 
The Celestial Express like a vanishing ghost, 

That Methuselah died when a very young man. 
When the sound of the press on this wilderness broke, 
And the clock was just ready to give the first stroke. 

Upon rudest of paper dead-ashen and gray 
The very first words that were marshaled in print 
Was " The Freeman's Own Oath." They were picking the flint 

Of young Liberty's firelock before it was day ! 
In this noontide, the shadows rolled up at our feet, 

And the paper dawned white as a field of fresh snow, 
And the clock striking "twelve," the old Oath we repeat 

And we pass it along to the ages below. 



THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM. 



FRIDAY, the twenty-first of April, 1775, a horseman rode 
express into Enfield Street, Connecticut, with the tidings 
from Lexington Green. It was " Lecture day" and minister 
and people were in the meeting-house. Lieutenant Isaac 
Kibbe, the tavern-keeper who dispensed noggins of rum as 
befitted the times, procured drum and drummer, rudely put 
an end to the devotions, and Major Nathaniel Terry, a fore- 
father of General Terry, U. S. A., led the valiant band away. 
The local historian reduces my Captain Abbey to the ranks. 

Twenty-three years after, a child was born across the 
street from the meeting-house, and he dwells there yet. 
They had nothing against the boy as I can learn, but they 
gave him a Bible name that she would be a brave and reck- 
less mother to confer upon her helpless infant in these later 
times, for they called him ''Aholiab," and the child grew 
apace, furnished me with this historical incident, and has 
lived worthily and well "even unto this day." 

How much unrecorded history, unbound and tattered 
pages of our national annals, is hidden away in the tills of 



2 2 DULCE DOMUM. 

cedar chests, between the leaves of Family Bibles, Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress, Baxter's Saint's Rest, Fox's Book of Mar- 
tyrs, dusty old Josephuses, antiquated old almanacs and in 
feeble old memories, we shall never know. But the historic 
treasure-trove that quest or chance so frequently unearths 
compels the regret that the knowledge of unnumbered deeds 
of virtue and of valor has utterly perished from the earth. 

The great bells of centennial clocks, that during the last 
ten years have been striking round the land, have done more 
and better than to " make a joyful noise." They have stimu- 
lated research ; they have startled multitudes with the truth 
that commercial values do not attach to everything exceeding 
precious ; they have quickened dead incidents ; they have 
been resurrection bells. 



THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM. 



IN Pilgrim land one Sabbath day 
The winter lay like sheep about 
The ragged pastures mullein-gray ; 

The April sun shone in and out, 
The showers swept by in fitful flocks, 
And eaves ticked fast like mantel clocks. 

II. 

And now and then a wealthy cloud 

Would wear a ribbon broad and bright. 

And now and then a winged crowd 
Of shining azure flash in sight ; 

So rainbows bend and blue-birds fly 

And violets show their bits of sky. 

III. 

To Enfield church throng all the town 

In quilted hood and bombazine, 
23 



24 



DULCE DOM CM. 

In beaver hat with flaring crown 

And quaint vandyke and victorine, 
And buttoned boys in roundabout 
From calyx collars blossom out : 

IV. 

Bandanas wave their feeble fire 

And foot-stoves tinkle up the aisle, 

A gray-haired Elder leads the choir 
And girls in linsey-woolsey smile. 

So back to life the beings glide 

Whose very graves have ebbed and died. 



One hundred years have waned and yet 
We call the roll, and not in vain. 

For one whose flint-lock musket set 

The echoes wild round Fort Duquesne, 

And swelled the battle's powder-smoke 

Ere Revolution's thunders woke. 

VI. 

Lo, Thomas Abbey answers " Here ! " 
Within the dull long-metre place ; 



THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM 25 

That day upon the parson's ear 

And trampling down his words of grace 
A horseman's gallop rudely beat 
Along the splashed and empty street. 

VII. 

The rider drew his dripping rein 

And then a letter wasp-nest gray 
That ran : 

O/ne ^oncoicl Q^unate Q/fcen 

Gzna iea^coa^d nacl a /M/it to^aay. 

Ten little words to tell the deed. 

VIII. 

The Captain read, struck out for home 

The old quickstep of battle born, 
Slung on once more a battered drum 

That bore a painted unicorn. 
Then right-about, as whirls a torch 
He stood before the sacred porch ;-— 

IX. 

And then a murmuring of bees 

Broke in upon the house of prayer. 



26 DULCE DOMUM. 

And then a wind-song swept the trees, 
And then a snarl from wolfish lair, 
And then a charge of grenadiers, 
And then a flight of drum-beat cheers. 

X. 

So drum and doctrine rudely blent, 

The casements rattled strange accord, 

No mortal knew what either meant, 
'Twas double-drag and Holy Word, 
Thus saith the drum and thus the Lord. 

The Captain raised so wild a rout 

He drummed the congregation out ! 

XI. 

The people gathered round amazed, 

The soldier bared his head and spoke. 
And every sentence burned and blazed 

As trenchant as a sabre-stroke : 
" 'Tis time to pick the flint to-day, 
"To sling the knapsack and away — 
" The Green of Lexington is red 

" With British red-coats, brothers' blood ! 
" In rightful cause the earliest dead 

" Are always best beloved of God. 



THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM. 



27 




TWAS DOUBLE-DKAG AND HOLY WOKD, 

THUS SAITH THE DRUM AND THUS THE LORD. 



2 8 BULGE DOMUM. 

" Mark time ! Now let the march begin ! 
"All bound for Boston fall right in!" 

XII. 

Then nib-a-diih the drum jarred on, 
The throbbing roll of battle beat ! 

" Fall in, my men ! " and one by one, 

They rhymed the tune with heart and feet, 

And so they made a Sabbath march 

To glory 'neath the elm-tree arch. 

XIII. 

The Continental line unwound 

Along the church-yard's breathless sod, 

And holier grew the hallowed ground 
Where Virtue slept and Valor trod. 

Two hundred strong that April day 

They rallied out and marched away. 

XIV. 

Brigaded there at Bunker Hill 

Their names are writ on Glory's page. 

The brave old Captain's Sunday drill 
Has drummed its way across the Age. 



HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 



THERE was a time when hearths and hearts 
In rural hfe were counterparts — 
The only neutral ground of grace 

In all this troubled world. Would I 

Could paint the homely picture right, 
The low-browed dwelling's altar-place 

Forever lost, forever nigh — 
Paint the divergent rays that shed 

Along the dark their lines of light 
Like nimbus round a sacred head. 
There, sturdy fire-dogs, legs apart. 
Upheld that glowing work of art 
The beech-and-maple kitchen fire, 
The twinkling, crinkling, creeping fire 
That gives a flash and shows a spire ; 
One instant builds a phenix nest, 
Another, mounts a gleaming crest, 
A feu-de-joie, it shoots a jet, 
Up comes a crimson minaret ; 



29 



3° 



DULCE DOMUM. 

The flame is fanned, the blaze is blown, 
You hear a mill-flume's undertone — 
The rattling, battling, roaring fire 
With flapping flags and lapping tongues 
That purrs and burrs with lion's lungs, 
Expands the ring of kitchen chairs 
And brightens up the brow of cares. 



The coals of rubies fall apart, 

Lo, secrets of a burning heart : 

The embers show a Valentine, 

Dead faces smile, lost castles shine 

And pansies blow and eglantine, 

And old gold beads and rings of price 

And buds and birds of Paradise. 

A soft red twilight charms the room 

And fills it like a faint perfume. 

There, couples sat the night away 

Whist as a button-hole bouquet — 

Some russets roasting in a row, 

Some talking flames that " told of snow," 

Some cider that her hands had drawn, 
Two pairs of lips, a single cup, 
Both kissed the brim and drank it up. 

The candle has its night-cap on, 



HEARTS AND HEARTHS. 



31 




FOR IT THE SWEETHEART STRANG, AND LAID 
A MUFFLING FINGER ON THE BELL 
LEST THE SHRILL STEEL SHOl'LD STRIKE AND TELL. 



32 



DULCE DOMIM. 

Tlu- viMV rinl)iM"s ji^oiu' lo I)ed — 
Who sliall iiH-oi-(l wliat citlior said? 
Or who so i-h)i|iit'iit t\in ti'll 
1 low i-arlv appU's iisinl to smell? 
riu' woodsy, I'vaiu'siH'iit task- 
C)l hcnic's plucked with caocr haste 




AM) 1-lNliKKS loll MKl) AM) KANCV WOKK — 



As through the meadow lands ihov crept, 
Aiul fiiio^ers touched and fancy woke 

Ami never slumbered, never slept 
"Till Day on life's sweet dreamings broke? 



J/J:AA"JS ANJJ Jl l:A h"JII S. ■^7, 

The pious clock a murmur made, 

Held up both hands before its face, 

Not meant so much for twelve o'clock 
liut just astonishment and shock 

At such a want of modest grace, 
For up the sweetheart sprang and lair! 

A unifniiig finger on the bell 

Lest the shrill steel should strike and tell, 
And gave th(; liands a backward whirl, 
Took time "on tick," the reckless girl ! 
Where is the lover? Old anrl lone. 
And wh(;re the; maiden ? Gray and gone. 
I read the dim /la lie stone : 

A willow tree, a "Sacred To" — 
The sad old story ever new. 
For all the twain the world moves on. 

I saw a spider drift about 

Upon the sun-shot morning air, 

As if like thistle blossoms blown 
At random, desolate and strown, 
Now here and there and everywhere, 
And all the while that aeronaut 
Was paying nature's lifedine out I 
I traced it by the nervous thread 



34 



DULCE DOMUM. 

Back to its little silken lair 

Safe hid in a verbena bed. 
It never cut that cable fine 
But felt its home along the line. 

And then I thought, and then I said 
Our life-line is the love of home, 
Oh, make it fast where'er you roam 

Amid the rough world's rolling strife 

It is the anchorage of life. 



A LAMENT FOR ADAM. 



I AM always bewailing the desolate fate 
Of the primal old Crusoe who led off the race 
With no boots and no boyhood, no swing on the gate, 
What could Paradise be with its garden of grace 




A DAY DREAM. 
35 



36 DULCE DOMUM. 

To a being who never had felt himself grow- 
But had stood up and lived like the Parian snow 
At the touch of the sculptor? Lone Nobody's son 
With a world to himself and a census of one. 
Lo, a man with no story to linger behind, 
If we only except the Darwinian kind — 
Lo, an orphan by birth though no creature had died. 
Or been born, wooed or wed as bridegroom or bride. 
I look up the gray eons with wondering thought 

Where humanity's Duke in his nakedness strode. 
All uncrowned and untraveled, unlettered, untaught. 

With no fire but the sun and the lair for abode. 
Not a word could he write, not a breath could he read. 
It was Adam, ^^ his X mark,'' to the lease and the deed. 
Ah, the hermit of Eden could never have dreamt 

That his boys would wear pinions forever unfurled 

And away down the line would track up the round world 
With their highways and thoughtways, as a comet unkempt, 
A fourth Fury of fire by Omnipotence driven. 
Dishevels her hair on the bosom of Heaven ; 
Would haye turnpiked the planet and graded the sky. 
Swept meridian lines in the glance of an eye 
With their flashes of lightning and footprints of ink, 
Till the lumbering globe was beginning to think ! 

The world was all ready for bridegroom and bride 



A LAMENT FOR ADAM. 37 

When Adam awoke from his wonderful swoon 
And Creation's fair crown lay alive by his side ; 

For a trinket of silver, the honey-bee's moon 
Hung low in the azure, a gift from the Lord, 

For her garments, bright emerald garnished the trees. 

And her flounces and aprons slow swung in the breeze, 




And the violets caught her blue glance from the sward ; 
With the flush of new life she just lifted her head 
And the roses of York blushed a Lancaster red, 
And the whispers ran round like the rustle of leaves 
And the young woods of Paradise laughed in their sleeves. 

Now Eden to Earth doth this legacy leave : 
The month of that wedding of emerald ray 

Shall wear through the cycles the colors of Eve, 
Shall belong to all ages forever and aye, 

With its birds in full song and its breezes in tune, 

So she left her best clothes to Magnificent June. 



38 



DULCE DOMUM. 






i*-^ n 


M^i^ 


^'ft^',:> 


-;^^-:- 


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''-■'^ '-"'""" ' 


■^ \^-L': ■■- 


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j>^ - ^ -s5--- - "^''^ ■-'^-'c- v^> 



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St 






KVE S ONCllAKD. 



"DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP." 



May 30TH, 1776. May 30TH, 1876. 

ONE hundred years ago this blessed day 
The schooner Franklin grounded on a bar, 
And British boats swarmed down upon the prey 

As thick as bees where clover blossoms are. 
She was a fighting schooner, and the sky 

Was clouded up with battle near and far. 
And like a flame the crimson flag did fly — 
She had her choice to strike it or to die. 
They took the hapless schooner fore and aft, 
With whips of living fire they lashed the craft, 
'Twas raining iron and 'twas lightening steel. 

And cannon thundered through the heavy weather, 
'Twas crash and flash — 'twas shout and whirl and w^heel, 
And splintered fire and muskets' rattling peal, 

And cheers and curses went aloft together. 

Redder than sunset was the Franklin's deck. 

And many a sea-dog lay a shattered wreck. 

39 



4° 



DULCE DOMUM. 

They brought the ship about until she wore 
Nearer hell's port than she had sailed before. 

The schooner's Captain bore an unknown name 
That never had been heard in song or story, 

And yet the gallant Wingford's heart of flame 
Should light a ballad of Centennial glory. 

One hundred years ago this day he died, 

One hundred years ago this day he cried 

Amid the throe and tempest of despair, 

"The Flag, my men, we'll keep it floating there f" 

Splashed like a wine-press, wounded, sore-beset. 

Swath after swath he cut right through the throng, 
On every royal jacket that he met 

He slashed a scarlet chevron good and strong ; 
He cleared a place to die with swinging stroke, 
His cutlass clanged upon the slippery oak. 
He fell, and gave one upward lightning glance 
That shone an instant like the flash of lance, 
For there aloft the fiery flag yet swung 
And lapped the murky cloud, a crimson tongue — 
He rallied up his soul and voice and cried 
'■'■ Oh, don't give up the ship ! " and so he died 



'DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP." 



41 




ON EVERY ROYAL JACKET THAT HE MET, 

HE SLASHED A SCARLET CHEVRON GOOD AND STRONG. 



42 



DULCE DOMUM. 

If that be dying, and the sailors heard 
And took the Captain at his latest word. 

Great Heart, good-night ! Death made thee commodore. 

And yet no orders for an hundred years ! 
Why name this man a century ashore ? 

I'll tell you why. They could have spared their tears 
Who mourned him dead. He is not dead at all, 
He was not made to smother in a pall. 
Men are alive who might have heard him speak 
Amid the thunders of the Chesapeake 
Those very accents, "don't give up the ship!" 
That rang again from Lawrence' dying lip. 

By some new name here, there and everywhere, 
The soul of courage breathes the living air. 
One noble deed may bless the race, and when, 
As myriads now asleep, men die for men 
And Liberty and God, the deed inspires 
And kindles and exults like prairie fires, 

Until, horizon to horizon broad, 
It makes day's camp-fire in an utter night 
And doubles noon-time to intenser light. 

It wilts the flowers indeed and glooms the sod. 



''DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP." ^^^ 



But one sweet May will end the sad eclipse 
And flowers will worship with their scarlet lips 

And lilies pray and make all right with God. 
And so our vast encampments of the Blue 

May have their marching orders any day, 
And pass the world agaiTn in grand review, 

Defend the right and hold the wrong at bay- 
May haunt with valor some poor halting heart 
Till seeming clods to instant manhood start, 
Cast off, as lightnings flash, their long disguise 
And stand transfigured to our earnest eyes. 



44 



DULCE DOMUM. 







LINCOLN AND HIS PSALM. 



To lay hands upon Lincoln's classic text for any sake 
may be presumption, but, in my desire to show how 
near akin are the Maker, who is the poet, and the Doer, I 
have been guilty of this thing. Whoever rises to the dig- 
nity of great truth or grand achievement, a solemn earnest- 
ness shed upon him like a glory out of Heaven, is so much 
a poet that, without his knowledge, his words strike into 
the stately Epic march or spring away in Lyric flight. 

And so, by jostling a word here and there out of its 
rightful place in the compact line, the utterances of the 
poetic soul are easily adjusted to poetic semblance. The 
grandest moods in men, like the royal scenes in nature, 
where each grows salient as if it would touch the Heavens, 
are never merr}'. There is no laughter in the Mountain 
that robed in the ermine of immortal winters stands up to 
judge the World. But the brook at his foot idles on with 
a childish laugh and is forgotten. 

To me, Lincoln's strong and rugged face was always a 
poem in itself. There were flashes of wit and flickers of 

45 



46 



DULCE DOMUM. 



humor like glimpses of sunshine in a shady place, but ever 
in those kind and gentle eyes an unspeakable sadness, as if, 
no matter what the lips were saying, they were always seeing 
the mission of their master's life, at once an anthem and a 
dirge, that should touch unreckoned ages, and make his 
words imperishable as our English speech. 

Ah, " it is a dread and awful thing to " live so grand a 
life as it is to die a tragic death. 







LINCOLN AND HIS PSALM. 



M 



DECORATION DAY. 

OVE on, ye pilgrims to the Springfield tomb — 
Be proud to-da}', O portico of gloom, 
Where lies the man in solitary state 

Who never caused a tear but when he died 

And set the flags around the world half-mast. 
The gentle Tribune and so grandly great 
That e'en the utter avarice of Death 

That claims the world, and will not be denied, 
Could only rob him of his mortal breath. 

How strange the splendor though the man be past ! 
His noblest inspiration was his last. 
The statues of the Capitol are there 
As when he stood upon the marble stair 
i^nd said those words so tender, true and just, 
A royal psalm that took mankind on trust — 
Those words that will endure and he in them 
While May wears flowers upon her broidered hem 
And all that marble snows and drifts to dust : 

47 



48 DULCE DOMUM. 

" Fondly do we hope, fervently we pray, 

"That this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away; 

" With charity for all, with malice toward none, 

" With firmness in the right 

"As God shall give us light, 
"Let us finish the work already begun — 
" Care for the battle sons, the Nation's wounds to bi,nd, 
" Care for the helpless ones that they will leave behind, 
" Cherish it we will, achieve it if we can, 
"A just and lasting peace forever unto Man!" 

Amid old Europe's rude and thundering years 

When peoples strove as battle-clouds are driven, 
One calm white angel of a day appears 

In every year, a gift direct from Heaven, 
Wherein from setting sun to setting sun 
No thought or deed of bitterness was done. 

" Day of the truce of God ! " Be this day ours 

Until perpetual peace flows like a river. 
And hopes as fragrant as the tribute flowers 
Fill all the land forever and forever. 



THE TWO ARMIES. 



ONE bright September day I rode 
Through prairie sweeps horizon-broad, 
And saw a host a million strong- 
Drawn up in columns dense and long. 
All silken-tasseled and beplumed. 
No bugle blew, no cannon boomed. 
No orders rang along the lines 
But whispers as in woods of pines. 
They stood erect in bright array 
And filled the splendid eye of day. 

Nine English miles from front to flank, 
Nine English miles from wing to wing, 

And as I flew from rank to rank 

They came about with stately swing. 

What hosts are these that wave the sword ? 

And quick returned the answering word, 

"One Standing Army of the Lord! 

49 



50 DULCE DOMUxM. 

The emerald regiments of corn 
At reveille salute the morn ! 



Now open out, ye legions green ! 

Let strange battalions march between 

Up to the front as they were wont, 

Ay, let the azure squadrons through, 

A grander armament than you. 

Two hundred thousand Boys in Blue ! 

The nation's graves have ebbed away 

And blent in dust the blue and gray. 

All peaceful as a field of maize. 

No billowed flags nor battle's blaze ; 

Thank God for calm from pine to palm. 

Strike up the benediction psalm : 

Now unto God be all the praise, 

To Blue and Gray good morn ! good night ! 

With one accord strike hands for right, 

And one the glory and the sheen, 

We'll fight new battles in the green ! 




ROSE, LILY, 
AND MAY FLOWER. 



I. 

IN Sharon's Vale some roses grew 4^ 
Three thousand years ago. 
And bloomed their little season through, 
And shed their leaves when winter blew 
Like flakes of fragrant snow. 

II. 

A royal hand did gather them 

And set them in his Song, 
You cannot find his diadem 
But broidered on his Hebrew hem 

The roses glow along. 
III. 
The stately Ages tread aside 

Where'er those roses are, 

SI 



52 



DULCE DOMUM. 




Though realms have vanished, 

diamonds died, 
Old Sharon's children yet abide 
As deathless as a star. 






.,^» ,£&>"■*•; ' ' :' 



,;;i;-j:'b-.!:j,i;^niE:'a;utfc~" «■ 



CHRIST'S LILIES 
I. 
In Galilee some lilies hung 
, Their chalices of white, 
And to and fro their fragrance flung, 
So many cups of incense swung 
Before the Lord of light. 
IT. 
The Turk and Christian trod to death 

The glory of the shrine. 
And left no lily's grave beneath 
Nor speechless elociuence of breath 
To sweeten Palestine. 
III. 
These idle princes of their race 
Have never died at all ; 



IWSE, LILY AND MAY L'LOWER. 



53 



Beholfl them in Jiuiean grace 
As rallied round a holier place 

Within his instant call, 
IV. 
They smile and wait at God's right hand 

And grow of strange account, 
For angels watch them as they stand 
Amid that lily-garden land. 

The Sermon on the Mount. 




' THE MAY FLOWER. 
I. 

A Pilgrim Flower — a troubled sea, 

A winter wild and white, 
Its only world was on the lea, 
A tempest caught and swept it free 
To wilderness and night. 



54 



DULCE DOMUM. 

II. 
Oh, Christians, for the May Flower pray, 

Each petal is a soul ! 
Adrift and doomed this Flower of May, 
Oh, women, weep your hearts away, 
Oh, gray-haired Sexton, toll ! 
III. 
December waited gaunt and grim 

Within its lair of snow, 
The shaggy forests ghostly dim 
Stood up and sang a funeral hymn 
Two hundred years ago. 
IV. 
That stranded flower was strangely blent 

Of amaranth and May ; 
From marble tower to miner's tent. 
Where'er the Anglo-Saxon went 
It brightens night and day. 
V. 
Oh, roses, lilies, flowers of May ! 

Akin to human kind. 
The Ages bear ye on their way — 
Bound in one sweet and rare bouquet 
An endless Spring is twined. 



MASSACHUSETTS SENDS CzREETING. 



1MET a man away down East 
Who towered amid the eight-rowed corn 
Raccoons could finish at a feast, 

And listened for the dinner-horn. 
A crow aloft on a hemlock limb 
Looked black at what would fall to him. 
The bilious earth lay blank beneath, 
His angry hoe showed signs of teeth. 
So nicked and notched with glance and glint 
At bowlder gray and sparkling flint. 
He saw a pumpkin's yellow blow 
And touched it with his thoughtful toe, 
Prophetic flower of by-and-by, 
Forerunner of one pumpkin pie! 

"Out West? Jes'so! Fromlllinoi? 
"My Jem is there — my oldest boy — 
" And John's in Kansas, so is Jane, 
"She married one Elnathan Payne; — 

55 



5 6 BULGE DOMUM. 

"And mother too — ^//^ wants to go. 

" No musket ever scattered so ; 

"And then it alius p'ints oneway — 

" Right where them big per-aries lay. 

"Betwixt them two — Death and the West — 

" They git our youngest, strongest, best. 

" It's queer the grave-yard keeps a-growin' 

"As ef nobody dreamed of goin' ! 

" It's there right where them brooms o' trees 

"Are sweepin' nothin in the breeze. 

"A queen-bee in an empty hive 

" Is all o' mine that's left alive. 

" I call them dead I never see, 

"The West or Heaven's all one to me — 

" I wait an' wait — God give me grace! 

"They don't come back from either place. 

"Them miles an' miles of level land, 
'• And ev'ry tree brought up by hand, 
" The sky shut down around the green 
" As snug as any soup-tureen. 
" Poor show for David with his sling 
"An' not a pebble fit to fling." 



MASSACHUSETTS SENDS GREETING. 57 

So talked the Massachusetts man 
And paused for breath and then began : 
" I hear you have," the farmer said, 
" A creature with a horse's head, 

"A cricket's body, dragon's wings, 
" The long hind legs of a kangaroo, 

" The hungriest of created things 
" That eats a landskip through an' through ; 

" A boarding-house for bugs may be 
"The place for you but not for me." 

Alas, old man, I sadly said, 

They are, indeed, most nobly fed ; 

You taunt us with no dainty touch. 

But had those creatures boarded here 
It would have saved us many a fear. 

They could not harm you very much, 
And then it cannot be denied. 
They surely would have starved and died. 

" I wouldn't swap the old Bay State," 
The farmer cried with voice elate, — 
He stood upright in every joint 
As any exclamation-point, 



58 DULCE DOMUM. 

And hoe and stone struck instant fire 

As if he thus touched off his ire, — 

" I wouldn't swap the old Bay State, 

" It's rugged rocks and mountains great, 

" For land as level as a hone, 

" All ready fenced and seeded down. 

" Our grain stands slender in the shock, 

"The grists are light we send to mill, 
" But then we gave you Plymouth Rock 

"Where Freedom's clearins' first begin; 

" The world takes stock in Bunker Hill, 
"Where Freedom put the sickle in. 
"You've Injuns West but we're ahead, 
"Our Boston Mohawks alius led, 
" That took a cargo of Bohea 
"An' steeped a drawin' in the sea 
" An' asked young Liberty to tea ! 
"They snuff at Boston, and they dub 
"The good old town the Yankee 'Hub.' 
"What all it means I never knew, 
" My way at least, it may be true : 
" I know its gritty boys go out 

" Like spokes of wheels to reach the rim 
" That binds creation all about 



MA SSA CH USE T TS SEiVD S ( }REE EING. 



59 




THE WORLD TAKES STOCK IN Bl'NKER HILL 
"where freedom put THE SICKLE IN." 



6o DULCE DOMUM. 

"Till West an' East an' South an' North, 

"You hear their whistle or their hymn 
"Around the felly of the earth!" 

The old man heard the dinner-horn 
And stumped away among the corn. 
The truth had lighted up his face 
And lent the furrowed features grace. 
He turned and called aci'oss flie lot, 
" There's one thing more I 'most forgot ; 
" Ef you see Jem or John or Jane, 

"Jes' tell 'em where you've been to-day; 
" That I yit walk the narrow lane 
"Whose end is growin' mighty plain, 

" And that I send 'em far away 
" One word from Massachusetts sod, 
"The blessin' of their Fathers' God, 

And tell 'em too, an Eastern boy 
" Must make a man in Illinoi." 

Such hearty, homely words he spoke, 
The chimney wore a plume, of smoke, 
The wife stood watching at the door, 
Good-by, old man, forevermore. 



-GOD KNOWS." 



I. 

AN emigrant ship with a world aboard 
Went down by the head on the Kentish coast, 
No tatter of bunting at half-mast lowered, 

No cannon to toll for the creatures lost. 
Two hundred and twenty their souls let slip, 
Two hundred and twenty with speechless lip 
Went staggering down in the foundered ship. 

II. 

Nobody can tell it — nor you nor I, 

The frenzy of fright when lightning thought 
Wove like a shuttle the far and nigh, 

Shot quivering streams through the long forgot, 
And lighted the years with a ghastly glare, 
A second a year, and a second to spare, 
'Mid surges of water and gasps of prayer. 

III. 
The heavens were doom and the Lord was dumb. 
The cloud and the breaker were blent in one, 

6i 



DULCE DOMUM. 

No angel in sight, not any to come ! 

God pardon their sins for the Christ His Son ! 
The tempest died down as the tempest will, 
The sea in a rivulet drowse lay still, 
The roses were red on the rugged hill — 
The roses that blow in the early light 
And die into gray with the mists of night. 

IV. 
Then drifted ashore in a night-gown dressed 

A waif of a girl with her sanded hair, 
And hands like a prayer on her cold blue breast. 

And a smile on her mouth that was not despair. 
No stitch on the garment ever to tell 
Who bore her, who lost her, who loved her well. 
Unnamed as a rose — was it Norah or Nell? 

V. 

The coasters and wreckers around her stood, 

And gazed on the treasure-trove landward cast, 
As round a dead robin the sturdy wood. 

Its plumage all rent and the whirlwind past. 
They laid a white cross on her home-made vest, 
The coffin was rude as a red-breast's nest. 
And poor was the shroud, but a perfect rest 
Fell down on the child like dew on the West. 



''GOD KXOWS." 



63 



VI. 

A ripple of sod just covered her over, 

Nobody to bid her " good-night, my bird ! " 

Spring waited to weave a quilt of red clover, 
Nobody alive had her pet name heard. 




'what kame?" asked the preacher, 
"god knows!" they said 



" What name ?" asked the preacher, " God knows !" they said, 

Nor waited nor wept as they made her bed. 

But sculptured " God knows " on the slate at her head. 

VII. 
The lesson be ours when the night runs wild. 

The road out of sight and the stars gone home, 
Lost hope or lost heart, lost Pleiad or child, 

Remember the words at the drowned girl's tomb. 
Bewildered and blind the soul can repose 



64 



DULCE DOMUM. 



Whether cypress or laurel blossoms and blows. 
Whatever betides for the good " God knows " — 
God knows all the while — our blindness His sight, 
Our darkness His day, our weakness His might. 




THISTLE SERMON. 



PRAY let the gaudy tulip go 
For Scotland's flower with crimson crest, 
That wears a bee on every blow 

And bristles like a bandit dressed ; 
That drifts its silver life-balloon 
Along the year's dull afternoon 
Bound for another Spring, and girds 
The feeble heart like holy words. 

Just as the seeds are fit to fly 

A yellow-bird drops deftly down, 

A living nugget from the sky, 

x\nd lights upon the thistle brown. 

And then, as if the golden-head 

Were shaking up its feather bed, 

A little breathless tempest breaks 

About the bird in silver flakes, 

A cunning cloud of flock and fleck — 

Alas, the thistle is a wreck ! 

65 



66 



DULCE DOMUM. 



But no, the seeds are taking wing, 
The goldfinch has no time to sing 
For taking toll, and then the gale 
Sweeps out the fleet of silk and sail, 







%^'^*'^' 




^§- > -^ 



AND THEN, AS IF THE GOLDEN-HEAD 
WERE SHAKING UP ITS FEATHER BED. 

And so, the weeds are always here. 

And finches dine another year. 

And so, O troubled Soul, good cheer 



A BIRTH-DAY. 



December lyxH. 1807. 
I. 

NEW ENGLAND bred, December born, 
Oh, eldest son of Doric song. 
We bid thy fame and thee good morn ! 

The welcomes of the world belong 
To thee. Thanksgiving Day drifts down 
To set thy birth-right in its crown. 

II. 

Thanks for thy bugle-horn that played 

Oppression's Dead March round the land. 

Thanks for thy ringing harp that made 
New pulses leap in Labor's hand, 

Thanks for thy trumpet's Gabriel blast 

That rallied out the right at last. 

III. 

Thanks for thy psaltery's iron strings 

That shook their rhythmic thunders out 

67 



68 DULCE DOMUM. 

As eagles spurn with clashing wings 

The mountain eyrie's rock redoubt, 
Until God's broad horizons ran 
The circling brotherhood of man ! 




IV. 

Thanks for thy golden bees that hum 

The fragrant tunes of summer through 

The year ; forever go and come 

With all things sweet and pure and true, 

And lend these dull and daily lives 

The music of the murmuring hives. 



V. 

Midway between Thanksgiving Day 
And Christmas Eve a cradle rocked, 

An angel left his radiant way 

And stood beside the door and knocked. 



A BIRTH-DAY. 

Before him waved the Christmas glow, 
Behind him wliirled the drifting snow. 

VI. 

The door swung wide. Beyond his feet 
The yule-log streamed a golden light, 

As if a small celestial street 

Were ribbon'd on the breast of night. 

Let grace and mercy here abide 

From Halloween to Christmas-tide ! 



69 




VII. 

" Now peace on earth," the angel said, 
" Praise God the Father and the Son," 

And so above that infant head 

The carol and the psalm begun, 

Translated since in every tongue, 

By battle thundered, Mercy sung. 



70 



DULCE DOMUM. 



VIII. 

The Christmas coal that touched his Hps, 

The Christmas soul that warmed his breast, 

Unquenched to-day in earth's eclipse 
Is yet aglow, is still a guest, — 

In roll of timbrel, song of wren, 

'Tis " peace on earth, good will to men ' " 




IX 

He sang. The debtor's dungeon door 
Swung backward on its hinge of rust. 

The chains clanked down that bondmen wore 
And blood cried out from speechless dust, 

Till skies of daisies starred the sod 

Where terror knelt and tyrant trod. 



A BIKTH-DA Y. 



71 



X. 

He sang. And poor Bron rhuddyn's throat 
Was trembling sweet with English song. 

He sang. And bolted lightnings smote 
The grizzly battlements of Wrong. 

Strike not thy " Tent " beside the sea, 

Brave Laureate of Liberty ! 




XI. 

Not " Snow-bound " yet, this later John 
Sings Eden's dear old songs again, 

And Whittier's Pilgrims travel on 

Till Time's last anthem sounds amen. 



ROCK EYRIE. 



"TT' THERE mountains lift forever at high tide, 

Y Y Where air is crystal and the near stars ride, 
Empyreal Admirals of the Blue, 
And silver snow-drifts mock the silver true, 
'Mid Nature's high relief. Rock Eyrie, hail ! 

Oh, friend afar, could prayer of mine avail 

Thy cloudless soul should match thy cloudless skies, 

Crowned with all joy thy Dulce Domum rise. 

Be every day good-morning and good-night. 

Till dawn celestial brings the perfect light. 

S^ir' Frontispit'ce. 
72 



THE FLYING HERALDS. 



I CAN see him now — the post-rider of my boyhood, in 
his muskrat cap, and his overcoat witli half as many 
capes as North America ; his tliin section of a horse that 
trotted on one leg and cantered with the other three. I 
can hear his tin horn, like the buzz of an unamiable bee, as 
he summoned the people out to gate or bars for the damp 
dry Weekly poor Desdemona could cover with her handker- 
chief. 




Afterward, I rode on the Fast White Mail that whirled a 
hundred tons of print and pen a thousand miles a day, and 
halted the sun that if should not go down until the morn- 
ing paper of New York had been read in "■ the land of the 
Beautiful River." All the whips and spurs of Derby Day 

73 



74 DULCE DOMUM. 

wore as the lazy click of a o-ranclam's needles slow kiutting- 
bv the kitchen tire, to that wild rattling ride, and when the 
miles gTcw short and shorter still, it was like a flight of 
rinuino- cheers. Swiftest motion is intensest life 



THE FLYING HERALDS. 



SLING up the bugle I Harp and lute, 
Let every dusty string be mute. 
Be still the drum and dumb the flute, 
While trumpets blow so brave and loud 

They rally like a flag unfurled 

And wake and warm the startled world — 
The trumpets of the " Flying Cloud." 
That silver breath of steam adrift 

As lazy as a morning mist. 
Can whirl an engine winged and swift 
As whirls a fan's small ounce of lift 

At the turn of my lady's wrist - 
Can stitch this planet's raveled robe, 
Gird like a slender girl the globe 
Till far-off cities meet and mate 
As neighbors gossip at the gate. 
Lo, there the Eagle Chariots come ! 
The gorges growl, the bridges drum, 
The tunneled thunder rumbles grum. 



75 



76 DULCE DOMUM. 

A blast of trumpet long and loud, 

Black clouds for pall and white for shroud, 

And starry sparkles raining fast, 

As if, God's autumn come at last, 

I saw adrift and tempest-rent 

A tatter of the firmament. 

"FIFTY MINUTES LATE." 

Pull out, my gallant engineer! 

Take aim along the smooth air line. 
The way is clear, the far is near, 

Five hundred miles and then we dine. 
Upon Chicago draw a bead — 
See where she lifts her antlered head, 

Her masted fleets like woods of pine. 

With clash and clank and roar and ring 
And clang of bell and trumpet blare 
And comet head-light's growing glare 

Old Vulcan's self has taken wing ! 
With rattling rock and swinging swerves 
He fearless sweeps the splendid curves. 
Lies over to the nervous work 
As wheel the chargers of the Turk. 
The engineer whips out his watch — 

The train is fiftv minutes late ! 



THE FLYING HERALDS. 

"Old Time's a nimble thing to catch," 
He says, "but then I'm sure as fate, 
" Shove in the diamonds there, my mate I " 
The mile-posts glitter like a grate. 

The red-mouth'd furnace yawns for more 

And gives a husky, hungry roar, 

It shakes a thunder-cloud of mane 

Above the quiver of the train, 

Down comes the lever quick and strong, 

The Eagle Chariots plunge along. 

'Tis whip and spur and rail and steel, 
'Tis flash and rush and rock and reel 
As if one streak of early dawn 
Should travel night-time and be gone. 
See all the while the driver stand, 
His heart-beat in his bridle hand, 
His hair by gusty night blown back — 
It blows whene'er he has the track ; 
His eye is on the iron bars 

That swing around to let him through, 
He hums a tune and thanks his stars 

" The Lansing's " stanch and tried and true. 
His brow is wet with mental sweat, 
He says, "I'm sure to make it yet — 



77 



78 DULCE DOMUM. 

" My grand old lady does her best." 

His soul is in the distant West, 

His watch is burning in his vest. 

Its bloodless hands that mock the dead 

Wipe off the minutes from its face 
As if the tears that Time had shed 

For some lost hope or perished grace. 

What if a paltry breath of space 
Would save that " foot-board " hero there 

His well-earned knighthood of the road, 
Those hands would never heed the prayer 

But mark the fatal hour he owed. 

The frantic bell is on the ring, 
The furnace door is on the swing. 
The Fast White Mail is on the wing. 
It whistles up the stealthy roads 

That creep across the iron way, 
It brightens up the still abodes 

Of them that weep or sleep or pray. 
The mighty eye glares down the rails, 
The cruel wheels come down like flails, 
The bull-dog bridges growl and growl 

Forever at the Herald's heel. 
The mile-posts all are cheek by jowl 



THE FLYING HERALDS. 



79 




THE BULL-DOG BRIDGES GROWL AND GROWL 
FOREVER AT THE HERALd's HEEL. 



8o DULCE DOMUM. 

And sixty in an hour! 

It means far more than steam and steel, 
This wondrous burst of pinion power, 
Means tempered grit and iron will, 
Means nerve and faith and brain and skill. 

"TWENTY MINUTES LATE." 

The twain at last have struck their gait — 

The engine and the engineer. 
" The train is twenty minutes late ! " 

The smutty fireman gives a cheer. 
He lets her out in giant strides, 

She thrusts her slender arms of steel 
Deep in the caskets at her sides. 

The nervous creature seems to feel 
For something precious hidden there ; 
Plucks out great handfuls of the power 
That gives her sixty miles an hour, 
And flings and tosses everywhere 

Huge volumes of the power asleep, 
As if a thousand fleecy sheep 
Turned out to pasture in the air. 

^' She buckles bully to the work, 
^' She's not the kind of girl to shirk," 
The driver says, and tries the gauge 
And never dreams he leads the age. 



THE FLYING HERALDS. 



81 



Full seventy feet at a single plunge, 
And seventy feet at a single breath, 
And seventy feet from instant death ! 

A little slower than the lunge 

The lightning makes that stabs the night, 
And faster than a falcon's flight. 

'Tis seventy feet at every beat 

Of heart and clock the train is hurled, 

At such a rate with such a mate 

Not eighteen days around the world. 




^4%"y"-/' 



"ON TIME!" 
The hamlets scatter from the path, 
As tempests blow the aftermath, 
And wild as deer the woods retreat 
That met and whispered in the street. 
" Down brakes ! A haystack blocks the route ! 
And there ! It slowlv waltzes out. 



82 DULCE DOMUM. 

A mighty shadow inks the track 

As if a mountain should lie down 

And leave the print from foot to crown — 
Before you think it there and back 

We cut the shadow through and through, 
The telegraphic poles grow dense 

As forests of the tall bamboo, 
That swift striped streak is just a fence 

As if ten miles of ribbon flew. 
'Tis neck and neck. The driver smiles, 
He's running down the missing miles. 
The train swims on with easy sway 

As supple as a serpent's glide, 
Chicago and the break of day 

And miles and minutes side by side ! 
White lights and red, green lights and blue, 
The thorough-breds have pulled us through — 
Through snow and blow and ray and rack, 

A thousand miles ! One night and day ! 
From black to white, from white to black. 

" My move," I hear the driver say, 
" Checkmate to Time ! We've won the game, 
"The race for life, the flight for fame — 
"Chicago! and we kept the track." 



AUGUST LILIES. 



DIED last night at twelve o'clock 
The richest month of all the year, 
Her belted grain in sheaf and shock 
Like gold encampments far and near. 
The rose-tree mourns in spider's crape, 
At half-mast stands the hollyhock, 

The rock that five-leaved ivies drape 
Has dared to rob some prince of Tyre 
And wear his robe of purple fire. 

II. 

The lively locust's rattling watch 
Is always busy running down, 

The cricket sings its breathless catch 
And sunflowers lift the yellow crown. 
As if a fairies' grave-yard lent 

Its slender bones to dance a match, 

Cicadse's knees and elbows bent, 

83 



84 DULCE DOMUM. 

In flurries whirl, a crazy set, 
To click of Moorish castanet. 



III. 

Unto this August, Time has told 

Down thirty perfect days in rhyme, 

Unsullied hours a minute old, 
A minute from celestial clime, 
With two full moons to shine the while, 

Twelve hours were silver, twelve were gold ; 
Five Sabbath mornings' peaceful smile 

To light the radiant weeks along, 

With flush of leaf and flights of song. 

IV. 

O Queen of Months, a splendid dower 

Was thine, and yet thou could'st not wait 

For all this wealth one little hour 
But met inevitable fate ! 
Broad leaves have hid all summer long 
A precious thing beside my gate. 
One after one each floral throng 

Had perished, but those leaves still kept 

Their secret as if something slept. 



AUGUST LILIES. 



85 




A HAND HAS PUT THOSE LEAVES ASIDE, 
LO, AUGUST LILIES LIGHT THE DAY ! 

SO FAIR, AS IF SOME ANGEL DIED 

AND TOOK THIS .MONUMENTAL WAV. 



86 DULCE DOMUM. 



V. 



A hand has put those leaves aside, 
Lo, August Lilies light the day ! 

So fair, as if some angel died 

And took this monumental way ; 
So pure, as if some Singer sweet 

Had touched it with her lips and sighed 
Because these chaliced lives so fleet, 

These dear Day Lilies, only last 

While each swift day is going past. 

And yet why not ? Why tarry here 

Till dark and drear November comes 
To play the Dead March on its drums 

Of sleet, and freeze the falling tear. 



CENTENNIAL BELLS. 



HAVING written a poem I made a pilgrimage to Inde- 
pendence Hall to see the subject. It was a delight to 
find the awkward wound has never healed ; that the gloomy 
dome is dingy; older than the Republic but with a refresh- 




ing suspicion of greenness. The sacred text is there yet ; 

the first proclamation of liberty, that in the Old Testament 

is a command, but transferred to the Old Bell was a 

87 



88 DULCE DOMUM. 

prophecy. The iron preacher pounded and expounded from 
that verse and stuck to the text as nobody else has, since 
Paul stood on Mars Hill. There are old Mission Bells 
a-many that are dumb, but Independence Hall has a Bell 
with a Mission, and so it can never be hushed. 

I put the old man in the belfry and gave him white hair 
and made him as glad and as mad as he could live ; and I 
set the boy on the stairs to call out to the ringer when the 
signing was done, and presented the lad with a pair of blue 
eyes because it is a fast color and I liked him; and yet I 
knew all the while that the Magi of the West, who are the 
Paul Prys of mankind and "disturbers of the peace" of the 
quick and the dead, declare the old man had no more idea 
for what he was ringing than the bell-wether of a flock of 
sheep, and that there was no such boy on the stairs nor any 
boy at all. If the incident is a fiction it is a melancholy 
pity, for it ought to be a fact. 



CENTENNIAL BELLS. 



YE belfry'd blacksmiths in the air, 
Smite your sweet anvils good and strong ! 
Ye lions in your lofty lair 

Roar out from tower to tower along 
The wrinkled coasts and scalloped seas 
Till winter meet the orange breeze 




POUR OUT, YE GOBLETS, FAR AND NEAR, 
YOUR GRAND MELODIOUS IRON FLOOD. 
89 



90 



DULCE DOMUM. 

From bridal lands that always wear 
The blessed blossoms round their hair. 
Centennial Bells, ring on ! 

Pour out, ye goblets, far and near, 

Your grand melodious iron flood, 
Till pine and palm shall think they hear 

The axes smite the stately wood, 
Nor dream the measured cadence meant 
The clock-tick of the Continent, 
The foot-fall of a world that nears 
The field-day of a hundred years. 

Ye blossoms of the furnace fires, 

Ye iron tulips rock and swing. 
The people's primal age expires. 

One hundred years the reigning king. 
Strike "one," ye hammers overhead, 
Ye rusty tongues, ring off the red, 
Ring up the Concord Minute INlen, 
Ring out old Putnam's wolf again. 

Ring down tlie curtain on To-day 
And give the Past the right of way, 
Till fields of battle red with rust 
Shine through the ashes and the dust 



CENTENNIAL BELLS. 

Across the Age, and burn as plain 
As glowing Mars through window-pane - 
How grandly loom like grenadiers 
These heroes with their hundred years ! 



91 




YE BLOSSOMS OF THE FfRNACE FIRES, 
YE IKON TULU'S ROCK AND SWING. 



Ring for the blue-eyed errand-boy 
That quavered up the belfry stair, 

" They've signed it ! Signed it ! " and the joy 
Rolled forth as rolls the Delaware. 

The old man started from a dream, 

His white hair blew, a silver stream, 

Above his head the bell unswung 

Dumb as a morning-glor}^ hung ; 

The time had come awaited long, 

His wrinkled hand grew young and strong. 



92 



DULCE DOMUM. 

He grasped the rope as men that drown 
Clutch at the Hfe-Hne drifting down, 
The iron dome as wildly flung 
As if Alaska's winds had rung. 

Strange that the founder never knew 
When from the molten glow he drew 
That bell, he hid within its rim 
An anthem and a birth-day hymn. 

So rashly rung, so madly tossed, 
Its old melodious volume lost, 
Its thrilled horizon rent and cleft. 
Of sweet vibration all bereft, 
And yet to hear that tocsin break 
The silence of a hundred years, 
Its rude discordant murmurs shake 
And rally out the soul in cheers 
Would set me longing to be rid 
Of sweeter voices and to bid 
Centennial Bells be dumb. 

Although no mighty Muscovite, 
No iron welkin rudely hurled, 

That bell of Liberty and Right 

Was heard around the Babel world. 



CENTENNIAL BELLS. 

Land of the green and golden robe, 

A three hours' journey for the Sun, 
Two oceans kiss thee round the globe. 

Up the steep earth thy rivers run 
From geologic ice to June, 
A hundred years from night to noon. 

In blossom still like Aaron's rod, 
The clocks are on the stroke of one — 

One land, one tongue, one flag, one God ! 

Centennial Bells, ring on ! 



93 



94 



DULCE DOMUM. 




TWO RIVERS AND TWO SHIPS. 



i\ 



THEN certain people say of a man "he is sentimental," 
they mean to pluck out his beard and make a finish 



of his manhood ; of a woman, that she is an amiable fool. 
The stout world sometimes fears anything tender but "legal 
tender," steaks and muffins. In cultivating hard heads on 
their shoulders men come to carry trilobites in their left 
breasts. As a rule, all childhood shrinks instinctively from 
him who forgets or despises his own, and he who will not 
confess to a soft place in his heart is quite sure to have one 
in his head. 

Of all earthly charms there is none so ineffable and ex- 
quisite as the charm of vouth. It invests indifferent thinofs 
with a grace that is almost beauty. That it must perish 
like a vanishing vision at dawning day, has been a burden 
of lament with the manliest of men. A love for creeping 
back under the world's Eastern eaves, and being for a mo- 
ment "the father of the man" again, is almost as restful 
and inspiring as a view from Banyan's Delectable Moun- 
tains whence the Celestial City is in sight. 



96 



DULCE DOMUM. 



These paragraphs are written as a placard of warning, a 
sort of "Beware," to those who would have nobody know 
they were ever ten-toed boys, lest they may blunder upon 
poetical premises with so much that breathes the spirit of a 
new Beatitude : Blessed is the land whose sons are all boys 
and whose daughters are all girls. 



TWO RIVERS AND TWO SHIPS. 



I'VE seen such rivers rolling down 
The world I thought them traveling seas, 

So vast they m.ade the land look lone, 

And spreading wide their seamless robe 

Defied the baj-rier and the breeze 
To circumnavigate the globe. 

I've seen such ships with piles of cloud 
Three heavens deep among the pines 
Stayed with the web of spidery lines, 

So queenly fair, so kingly proud, 

It took my breath to see them sail 
So near the sky's blue valance veil 
They might have heard an angel's hail. 

And yet they never thrilled and warmed 

Until my very soul was stormed, 

As when the meadow brook was passed 
With shouts of joy by pilgrims bold 
That played the Israelites of old — 

The girls with cambric frocks half-mast, 

97 



98 



DULCE DOMUM. 

The boys' blue trousers at the knee, 
And twinkling feet walked pebbly street 

And so we crossed the mimic sea; — 
As when I launched the dug-out boat 

All freighted with the mallow cheese 
And saw the jack-knife fabric float 

Triumphant in the fresh'ning breeze; 
The little fish like lancets keen 
Cut in and out with silver sheen, 
The green-legged frog and greener boy 

All leap to see the craft go by, 
The sweet-flag waves its two-edged blade, 
The smoky puff-balls fusillade, 
A bob-o'-link rings bells of joy, 

A red-bird flashes fire-works nigh, 

It is the Fourth of my July, 
Until, the cat-tail jungle reached. 

My gallant bark careened and beached. 

And then we boys and girls sat down 
And from a chip hat's battered crown 
'Shook out, while every tongue was whist. 
Some nut-cakes with the good old twist, 
I ask like Oliver " for more!" 
Some apples red and water-core. 



TWO RIVERS AND TWO SHIPS. 



99 




AN'D THEN IN BLISS THE BEVY SAT, 

AND ALL IN CONCERT STRANGELY MUIE 

WITH ROASTING EARS WE PLAYED THE FLUTE. 



lOO DULCE DOMUM. 

Some ribb'd and amber gingerbread, 
Some roasted corn — ah, what a head 
It must have been to fill the hat! — 
And then in bliss the bevy sat. 
And all in concert strangely mute 
With roasting ears we played the flute. 

One boy turned judge and sentenced men 

To die who then were yet unborn, 
And one who heard and heeded when 

" Boots and saddles " blew the bugle-horn ; 
A sabre kissed him and the scar 
Was lighted with a golden star. 
One girl for whom the angels sent 
Did hear the message, smiled, and went 
So long ago nobody knows 
Just where she takes her last repose. 
Another lives. Her silver hair 

Is shining with to-morrow's dawn. 
Her mournful eyes are full of care. 

Which best? Who knows? Brave heart, live on! 



OLD-FASHIONED SPRING. 



GIVE me the sweet old-fashioned Spring, 
Dear as a girl's engagement ring — 

I hear the keys in crystal locks 
Slow turn to let the rivers run 
And shine like lizards in the sun. 
I watch the rigid world come to, 
The skies come off with broods of blue. 

The soft clouds troop in fleecy flocks. 

The mosses green the umber rocks. 
The twin leaves lift their tips of ears, 
The rushes poise their slender spears, 

The squirrels tick like crazy clocks. 
The sunshine leave the Southern hall 
And swing around to the Northern wall. 

I watch the blue smokes slowly rise 
Amid the maples' reddening skies — 
The hemlock couch, the rafter rails. 
The neck-yoked Libras with their pails, 



102 DULCE DOMUM. 

The bended twig, a ghostly spoon, 

That films across like a cloudy moon ; 

The white eggs dance in the tumbling sap, 

The nut-cakes heap a checkered lap, 

The young moon's sickle reaps the stars, 

Her light ribbed off with maple bars ; 

The laugh of girls, the camp-fire glow. 

The great black cauldron, bubbling slow, 

The amber mouth-piece on the snow — 

Oh, memories of the maple fane, 

Wax sweet for aye though moons shall wane ! 

I tread brown earth with loving foot, 

Its breath steals up with Agur's prayer. 
I see the lily's green surtout 

Unbutton to the light and air. 
I hear the hymn-book songs begin 

To fly abroad from windows wide 
With notes of lilac-breath thrown in. 

And rhyme and thyme in mingled tide 
I hear the bees' small hum-book's drone 

From garden bed to clover glade 
And frogs strike up with deep trombone. 
And lilting bells and tambourine 

The old Homeric serenade. 



OLD-FA SHIONED SPKIXG. 



103 



..:./■ 


^ '» 






fems" 


.^ af-Hon. ^ 


N^ 






v>^-^^ 




> 




■ 




"'■<-„ . 




I04 



DULCE DOMUM. 



Give me the dear long-coming 

Spring, 
Horizons like a blue-bird's 
wing; 
I love its sights and sounds 
and scents, 
The plowshare's fragrant 

corduroy. 
The greenwood's rustling xj 
halls of joy, 
Down to the toad-stools' ^ 
tiny tents. 




s^^'\#Yy.r 




I HEAR THE BEES SMALL HUM-BOOK S DRONE. 



The fire-fly brings his lantern light 
To show the summer's velvet night. 
The beds of pinks arc bright with thrums 



OLD-FASHIONED SPKIXG. 



105 




THE GREAT BLACK CAULDRON BUBBLING SLOW. 



io6 DULCE DOMUM. 

And golden glow chrysanthemums, 
Verbenas burn, geraniums blaze. 

The smoke-tree clouds with purple mist. 
The fuchsia wears an amethyst — 
A ruby at the hum-bird's throat 
And silver in the finch's note 
And satin on the martin's coat. 
And fire upon the red-bird's wing, 
God speed the June ! The Sun is king. 



THE ONE STEP MORE. 



NOVEMBER'S rude and sleety drummers 
Are trampling down the fallen Summer's 
Rent uniforms of buff and red, 
And crape clouds all the world o'erhead 
As if this very world were dead ! 
The gray drum-majors of the rain 
Are beating every window-pane 
That shows a ghostly face again. 

II. 

Then up the road that shadows blotted 
Till all the dark was leopard-spotted, 

There shone a dim and twinkling light 
As if the sad disastered night 
Had shaken down with blow or blight 
Amid the gloom and rain and wood 

Some star of faintest magnitude. 

107 



io8 



DULCE DOMUM. 



III. 

Poor fire-fly strayed from domes of azure, 
Poor taper dropped from God's embrasure, 
So tossed and drifted round about 
To flutter wild and flicker out 
And leave the night in deeper doubt. 




Poor lost, forlorn, electric spark 

To quench in rain and drown in dark. 



THE ONE STEP MORE. 



109 










i-v- 



no DULCE DOMUM. 



IV. 



It rounds like daisies broadly blowing 

In California's floral snowing. 

The glimmer is a growing gleam, 

The gleam a glow, the glow a beam, 

As dawns afar Cyclopic steam. 

I see its planetary face, 

Its small horizon's curve of grace. 



I see a lantern boldly swinging, 
I hear its bearer bravely singing, 
His steps as sure upon the sod 
As if the cloudless hosts of God 
Beheld him as he walked abroad. 
No idle speculative eyes 
Are lifted to the clouded skies. 

VI. 

A little day the boy is bearing 
For rain and darkness little caring. 
All safe within his home-made noon 
What is Arcturus or the moon 
To him that sings his Bonny Doon ? 



THE ONE STEP MORE. 

Within the candle's curving shore 
His next step lies — he needs no more. 

VII. 

A lantern with a soul to man it 
Will light you round the stormy planet. 
On that one step all steps await — 
March on, my lad ! The hour is late — 
Another step — click goes the gate, 
The hearth-blaze shines along the floor, 
The light flares out from open door, 
The goal is gained with the one step more. 



Ill 



112 



DULCE DOMUM. 




THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. 



OH ! Nature loves her children, how the fond 
Blue Heaven is hovering all beyond 
The bended brim of our full-jewelled day, 
Till earth to azure softly melts away. 
In her great bosom there is room for all, 
For titled lord and trembling leaf to fall ; 
Her clouds are anchored and her rains are shed, 
O'er lilies faded, as o'er princes dead ; 
The mournful murmur in the River's song — 
The Bird's lament — to both alike belong. 
Dear Mother of us all ! How very small 
A place thou need'st for human pride and all 
Its jewelry — our treasures, one by one. 
Sparkle like rain, and sparkling — they are gone. 
They say the Indian Summer is the breath 
Of myriad leaves descended to their death. 
Ah ! sweet and rare the dying that can shed 
The smile of June o'er gray November's dead ! 
To be a leaf and lie upon the breast 

"3 



[14 DULCE DOMUM. 

Of summer air — to roof a cup of song, 

That by and by should seek the morning cloud, 
And glide from dawn to dawn in melody along, 

And sing at Heaven's portals out aloud ; 
To be a leaf, and put a glory on 
For dying in — when gentle winds are gone, 
To loose the tenure on the forest's crest, 
And winnow earthward to a breathing rest — 
Would be thrice blest, if this be all of life — 
These tardy dawns, these struggles and this strife, 
These hopes deferred, these clouds out-biding rain, 
The beating bosom and the throbbing brain. 
That have no Sabbath, in Time's weary train. 
But those spent billows where the loved were laid. 
Where smiles were few, and long "good nights" were said, 
Where tears were shed, and prayers were made, and song 

Was sung. Oh ! never dream the dead are there. 
Nature endures, indeed, but not for long, 

The peopled grave. The summer wind shall bear 
Its wakened beauty to the air of God. 

Something of loveliness within a shroud 
We folded, and we hid it 'neath the sod. 

Nature shall find it, and from clod to cloud 
Shall waft it. The summer wind on its sweet wing 



THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. n^ 

Shall bear it round the world. How she shall mould 
That dust of ours ! The emerald Spring 

Shall wear it, and the blue brocade of gold 
Wherein blest Autumn blushes like a bride, 

Shall have for warp and woof, a ravelled thread 
From that old robe of ours we laid aside. 

Is this a dying? This a being dead? 
The latest fabric from the looms sublime 

Hath nothing fairer than that old shall be. 
One treasure from thy halls, O gentle Time ! 

Give us thy graves ! 'Tis all we ask of thee ! 
Through the wide arc, from seraph down to sod, 
That dust shall vibrate 'neath the breath of God. 

'Tis joy to know these weary hearts we wear. 

Shall beat in Nature's greater bosom still ; 
'Tis bliss to feel there is no "vacant chair" 

In earth's dear homestead. " I feel," the poet said, 
"The daisies growing o'er me." The dying child 

Of song, obedient bent his gentl-e head. 
And died. Oh ! no, not died — those flowers that smiled 

Around his grave, were springing from his heart ; 

Dear thoughts of his that could not all depart. 

Oh ! never seek the dead in billowed graves ; 

Like sweet stars sprinkled on the rolling waves, 



Ii6 DULCE DO MUM. 

They are but shadows — death in brief disguise, 
Look anywhere but there. May be the skies . 
Retain them, or the air and light of God. 
The drop of rain that glitters on the leaf — 
The dewy world, that satellite of sod, 

Were once perhaps right eloquent of grief ; 
Nature distilled them, and they would not stain 

An angel's cheek. If angels ever weep 
For joy, well might it be in such sweet rain, 

Where married days lie side by side asleep — 
Where night's divorce forever is withdrawn. 
And double mornings brink unclouded dawn. 

It is not life that stains the window pane ; 

That dimly floats upon the azure air ; 
For God did link the labyrinthine chain 

Round something nobler than the garb we wear. 
We make the grave the Mecca of the thought — 
We dream that beauty there has come to naught • 
As if the rain that glitters gaily down 
The bended day wherewith God binds the frown 
Of tempests, would linger 'mid the seven. 
And hang suspended in an empty Heaven. 
The birds that there in green recesses sing, 

Within the maple swinging overhead. 



THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. 117 

May bear away upon each glossy wing, 

Some trait of beauty that we fancy dead. 
The rose-tree blooms above the sunken grave ; 
Her lips are pale below; perhaps they gave 
The mantling blush those roses wear to-day — 
Their breath the fragrance that they waft away. 

We build the tomb — we dream we dyke out day 

And fling a gloomy fortress round decay ; 

But Nature finds the idle dust we hide — 

She cleaves our marble and she mocks our pride. 

The hungry air devours the bolts and bars — 

The mournful rains slow weep the walls away — 
Time's busy fingers part a glimpse for stars, 

And darkness yields the tenantry to day. 
The grim old pyramids — the mountain caves, 

Where one by one the ancient dead were laid, 
Like ocean sands behind receding waves 

Bear not a trace that human footfall made. 
Dead? What is dead? Call we disrobing death — 

The "little sleep" that thought and heart may take — 
The " little sleep " a whisper or a breath, 

The morning light or falling rain may break ? 
Oh ! no. The great High Admiral who guides 
Life's fleet, and sets His signal on the tides, 



Il8 DULCE DOMUM. 

For leaves that drift — who pilots in the day 
And leads the ivy on its winding way, 
Will bring true Thought, however toss'd and driven, 
Clasped round with glory, to the port of Heaven 
If there are those who do not dare to die. 

And who would dread to see this great blue tent 
Of God slow closing like a dying eye, — 

No hand to fold — no foot-print where they went 
Who passed away, then let them rock a thought, 
From youth to manhood on the naked breast ; 
A living thought that shall become the guest 
Of Time, and to all heart, and right, and truth. 
Take up and breathe for aye the prayer of Ruth. 
It is as if the lark ascending nearer God 

Should leave some fragment of his song below — 
As if dear June should leave upon the sod 

A flower or two, to part December's snow. 
The Summer and the Bird would not be dead ; 
One only passed, and one just overhead ; 
The Lark would sing while Earth had heart to hear, 
And June would linger through the deathless year. 




THE CALI- 
FORNIA YEAR 



BEYOND the mid- 
land Rocky Range 
That wrinkles up the 

rugged world, 
Where gray volcanoes 

sat and smoked 
Like burgomastersweird 
and strange, 

And watched the columns as they curled ; — 
Where old Decembers crowned and cloaked 

Have seen a thousand Junes go by, 

119 



I20 



DULCE DOMUM. 




A CALIFORNIA YEAR. 



121 



A thousand winters leave the line 
Cast down upon the rocks to die, 
Until the granite crags grew white 
With icy bones and Arctic fight 
And grave-clothes decked with pine; — 
Where grim Sierra shows her teeth, 




Medusa East, Minerva West, 
A nursing Boreas at her breast. 
The chained and halted years beneath. 
She fronts two worlds with pale intent 
And smiles across the Continent. 



122 DULCE DOMUM. 

Beyond her California lies 

At graceful length with Zone undone, 
Behold this Cleopatra's eves 
Grow azure under Western skies ; — 

Her smitten cheeks turned one by one 
Like rare-ripe peaches to the sun ; 

A June of Junes in either hand, 
Her early roses light the late 

To bed, and not a flower to grieve 
From Easter Morn to Christmas Eve — 
A tropic heart, a bosom fanned 

By breezes from the Golden Gate. 

Then throned upon the unbound wheat 
She slips her sandals, and her feet 
Walk white among the lilies, while 
We tramp the snow-drift's silent mile. 
Her months like Graces stand in groups. 
To cull a flower November stoops, 
December's lips with berries stained 

Are pressed upon the cheek of June, 
October's hand is violet-veined 

And morning-glories last till noon. 

The Year's four seasons tossed and strown 
Like Sybil's leaves along the track 



A CAI.IFORXrA YEAR. 



123 




"^^ 



HOUSE OF REFUGE. 



124 



DULCE DOMUM. 



Of Time — the dear old reckoning gone 
For May meets August 
coming back, 
And tender blades and yel- 
low sheaves 
In one rich landscape 

strangely met, 
A wild Arabian -night 
vignette, 




And winter woods wear tiowing sleeves, 
And bud and bloom and harvest all 



Comminorle in a carnival. 



A VISION OF HANDS. 



K 



Y, give all honor to the man 

Whose sturdy work sweats off the tan, 
Who furrows out the royal road 

Where broad-tread harvests march abreast 




In rustling robe and golden vest, 
And gains his bread first-hand from God ; 



125 



126 DULCE DOMUM. 

Lives hand and glove with out-door life, 

Lives hand in hand with faithful wife, 

Strikes hands with earnest men who strive 

To keep both soil and soul alive ; 

Who does his duty out of hand 

And tills his heart and feeds his land ; 

Is hand to hand against the wrong, 

And sometimes, tallest when he kneels. 
Will lend a hand to roll the wheels 
Of manful, mindful toil along. 

There is a stain but not of dust 
That soils a hand beyond repair, 

The "damned spot" of broken trust; 
There is a fairer hand than fair, 

There is a shapelier hand than Burns 

Has sung. It may be broad and brown. 
And knotty as an antlered crown — 

The open hand that never turns 

Its back when need is at the door ; 

The hand that feels the left-breast knock 
Like flails upon a threshing-floor. 

And closes like the Arab rock 

And strikes for undefended Right 
With soul and sinew tense and tight. 



A VISION OF HANDS. 



127 




128 DULCE DOMUM. 

Straight out, and smites Goliah down — 
I think that hand has won renown ; 
Might touch and grace a kingly crown ! 

The plighted hand that glances white ; 
The royal hand with diamond light ; 
The gentle hand that cools the brow 
Like whispers from the fragrant snow 

Of orchards blossoming in May ; 
The artist hand that halts the sun 

To dawn along the canvas gray ; 
The hand whose tuneful fingers run 

Along the strings as zephyrs play, 

And float the soul on some sweet dream 

Of peace for which we ever pray ; 

The cunning hands that delegate 

To nerves of fire and pulsing steam, 
To lively valve and nimble wheel, 

To things that never want nor wait, 
To things that never lie nor steal, 
Alive as life and trained and taught 
The work by human sinews wrought — 
Ah, all these hands are wondrous fair. 
And yet recounting all, I dare 

To toast the Farmers' hands that kept 



A VISION OF HANDS. 

The wolf and wilderness at bay 
Where Pilgrims' bristling winters slept, 

And shaggy, white-maned lions lay ; 
Who picked the flint and picked the flint 
For Indian corn and Indian foes, 



129 




And cleared the cabins and the rows 
Of weeds and wampum by the dint 
Of rude flint-locks and rugged hoes. 



I30 



DULCE DOMUM. 

The hands that fired the morning gun 
Of Freedom when the world struck " one," 
And dug their rations as they went 
And left the Lord to pitch their tent, 
Were Farmers' sons. I rather think 
They stood so close to Glory's brink 
That, one step more, they would have seen 
Headquarters of the sons of men ! 

Twins of the million hands that donned 

The hickory shirts and blouses blue, 
And marched " with equal step " beyond 

The solemn dead-lines duty drew ; 
When soulless reapers took the field 

And tireless threshers smote the grain, 

And speechless mowers swept the swath 
While gallant squadrons charged and wheeled, 
And bolts of thunder struck the plain, 

And batteries tore a ragged path 
Through solid columns massed amain 
And mowed the human aftermath, 
And Blue and Gray alternate reeled, 
And Gray and Blue alternate kneeled 

Along the road of wreck and wrath. 



A VISION OF HAXDS. 



131 




"who goes thrre; 



132 



DULCE DOMUM. 

The Sun set red as if he wrought 
The bloody work he looked upon ; 

The Moon rose white as if she caught 
The pallid stare on which she shone 

Of dead men's faces turned supine 

And broken pitchers stained with wine. 



"AND FORBID THEM NOT." 



IT is May among the blossoms but November in my breast, 
There's a warble in the lilacs but my bird has left the nest, 
Not a path upon the planet that her little feet have pressed. 

Sure an angel must have halted on an errand going by, 
Must have whispered to the truant and have taught her how 

to fly. 
And she followed up the flutter of his pinions to the sky. 

From the Babel of my sorrow she has stolen out the song, 
She was tangled in our heart-strings and she took our hearts 

along 
With her clinging hands so delicate and yet so wondrous 

strong. 

As the reapers miss the daisies when they sweep the golden 

grain 
And they rise like constellations when the day begins to wane, 
So has Death just missed my darling and she surely lives 

again. 

133 



134 DULCE DOMUM. 

Ah, how strange that in her dying she became a deathless 

child, 
Like the children in the story upon whom the Savior smiled, 
That eighteen hundred years and more the ages have beguiled. 

She has conquered sin and sorrow, she has triumphed over 

time. 
Though the sexton told the story when he rung a single 

chime. 
Yet the echo of her little life shall linger like a rhyme, 

And shall turn the thoughts to music that we think in dreary 

prose. 
And this breath of being rounded till it scarce outlived a 

rose, 
As the rivulets are woven till the river seaward flows. 
With our own be ever blended till the dream of earth shall 

close. 



PRAIRIE LAND. 



THE prairies are the empty beds 
Deserted on some nameless day 
By seas that raised their crested heads 

And took their crystal clothes away. 
Not empty now ! A grander tide 
Than those of old that ebbed and died, 

Of golden seas that cannot drown, 
Of oceans where no Clarence lies, 
All rustling round the loving skies 

That fit the shore-line like a crown. 

These feeble images convey 

No picture of this realm to-day. 

Ye golden seas and tides away ! 

Behold the stately Northwest stands 
A queenly figure, firm, compact 
In one great grandeur by the act 

Of God and man. One splendid fact, 

135 



1^6 DULCE DOMUM. 



As if the marble statue woke 

Completed at a single stroke — 

'Tis thus to me the Northwest stands 

And fronts the hungry world, to hear 
The prayer of Christendom for bread, 
And holds the answer forth in both her hands ! 

The heaping harvests of the year 
Upon her prairie palms are spread 

From parallel to parallel. 

The lines that gypsies read to tell 
A fortune, are by fortunes hid 
As Pharaoh by pyramid. 

The men still live who might have seen 

This land without a yesterday — 
An empire of unfurrowed green, 
Unpeopled paradise of bees, 

Unsown, unmown, unknown, and gay 
With floral aborigines ; 
An empty wilderness of grass 
As silent as a looking-glass. 

The prairie schooners' canvas white 
Like eggs of ants in beaded line 



PRAIRIE LAND. 



137 













.,-=^: 




- -'^^l 




'-/>" -•'- . 











A COIN OI-' THE REALM. 



138 DULCE DOMUM. 

Would creep all day, all day in sight, 

As blossoms on a creeping vine. 
Sometimes the drowning sun would turn 

That white to crimson as he loomed, 
Would watch to see the canvas burn 

Like Moses' Bush all unconsumed ; 
Would make a trinket of the train, 
Then slowly sink beneath the main. 

Oh, world so utterly alone ! 

Oh, nights that weep and winds that moan ! 

Sometimes a group of horsemen tall 

Would ride with day-time at their backs. 
Their slender shadows weirdly fall 

In strange eclipse along their tracks ; 
Ride on before like ghosts that guide 
And leave no foot-prints as they ride ; 
Wolves turn and look a glittering growl 
And slowly winks the prairie owl, 
Till naked Night lets down her hair 
And lies along her level lair. 



THE DESERTED HOMESTEAD. 



IT is clean gone at last — the old homestead! It has 
forgotten its vernacular. Its household words are no 
longer the accents of Mother Country but of Faderland. 
The Dutch have taken it. It is Holland, and the old " tur- 
bulent tides " of memory will soon be diked out forever. 

But whatever becomes of it, it has helped mankind. 
"How far that little candle throws its beams; so shines a 
good deed in this naughty world." Did you ever see a 
rainbow die? — the sort of architecture that must be repaired 
every second, or it will crumble into atoms of colorless rain. 
And so the drops one by one fall into their places, the arch 
changing each instant and always the same, until the rain 
comes slow, and the tints grow faint, and the Bow goes out, 
and the cloud is bare of blazonry as if God had never put 
a seal to the Covenant. True and beautiful homes are drops 
of rain, and they are the hope of the world. 

He is thrice blest who has some mere earthly thing to tie to; 

a thing made bright and holy by unselfish affections, simple 

recollections, small sorrows and large delights. A birth- 

139 



140 



DULCE DOMUM. 



place is that thing. It is better to have in the family than 
a cow or a carriage, or even a castle after the household 
birds are grown and flown. A right-hearted man pays out 
the line that ties liim to the place of his childhood, but he 
never cuts it, for so it is he can hold on to himself, and keep 
all of his mental belongings together. It is a perpetual clue 
to his identity. 

Many people seem never to know what they have done 
with themselves ; they have lost so much, forgotten so much, 
despised so much, of feeling, affection, faith, hope and desire, 
in an ambition to play flying artillery in life's race, that who 
they are is a puzzle even to themselves. This calamity 
never happens when you have that place to tie to. The 
immortal tramp, Bunyan's Pilgrim, would tell you, if he 
could, that a man travels stronger and freer under a knap- 
sack, if only it is not the pack of sin, than when he travels 
light. Let everybody, therefore, make a bundle of childhood 
and homestead and take them along. They are burdens only 
as wings are: only lift them and they will lift you. 



THE DESERTED HOMESTEAD. 



FULL twenty summer-times ago 
I walked along this country road, 
When life and love were both in blow 

And none would dream it ever snowed. 
I saw a schoolma'am coming down, 
Her rippling hair was golden brown, 
I saw her firm and slender hand, 
I saw her foot-prints in the sand, 
A pair of rhymes in dainty type 

That brought to mind the old Gazette 
Where village poets used to pipe — 

The cricket corner where they set 

In little letters chirps of song 

Whose lines were only cricket long — 

And read them off as children tell 

A poem by the nonpareil. 

141 



142 



DULCE DO MUM 

II. 

I turned highwayman as I stood 

Beneath these oaks now older grown 
And cried as ruder robbers would, 

" Thy life and treasure are my own ! " 
I halted her with love's surprise 
And saw my answer in her eyes ; 
A bee was busy with a flower, 
A bird sang low from maple bower, 
The old white school-house swarmed with noise; 

We heeded not the babel rout. 
The girls knew better than the boys 

What meant the meeting there without, 
And smiling stood and watched me hold 

Her hand in mine and ran and told ! 
And some were mothers long ago 
And some caught out in early snow. 

III. 
Again I walk the road and meet 

Another schoolma'am coming down 
Who was not born when I did greet 

Her sister of the golden crown. 
I told this story to the girl 
And something like a living pearl 



THE DESERTED HOMESTEAD. 

Lit up the eyelid of the child ; 

She flashed it off and then she smiled. 

There should have been a Bow, I thought, 

That sunshine and that drop of rain — 
And then the present was forgot 

And perished days returned again. 
This thoughtful, sad September day 
Has slowly worn itself away. 
The sun and moon are face to face. 
He wanes in strength, she gains in grace. 

IV. 

It is not day, it is not night. 

Where are the feet that came and went ? 
Here stands the homestead still and white 

And silent as a monument. 
Its curtained windows in eclipse, 
Its white door fast as marble lips ; 
Never before were they denied 
The summer flowers and hours outside. 
Though tides of fragrance always sweep, 

In warmth and light it has no part. 
There in the daytime sound asleep 

And empty as a broken heart. 
The willow fountain swings and swerves 



143 



144 



DULCE DOMUM. 

And flings its leaf-wrought spray in curves; 
Strange, since the loved no longer stay 
It has not wept itself away. 

V. 

Here round the house the brown paths ran 

To lichened gate and stoop and well, 
Full forty years since they began 

To warm when busy bare feet fell. 
The wilderness redeems its own 
With clover leaves and plantain strown. 
The old meanders dimmed and grassed, 
The surge has washed them out at last. 
The dry old grindstone, crank bereft, 

Worn like a pebble in a brook, 
And little but the axle left. 

Stands idle in that shady nook. 
Ah, lusty times when naked arms 
That conquer deserts into farms, 
Ground off the sickle's edge of wire 
'Mid sparks of wit and sparks of fire, 
And scythes, swung down from apple limb 
Were set upon its rippling rim. 
Gone are the arms that turned the crank 
And gone the stroke through grasses rank. 



THE DESERTED HOMESTEAD. 



MS 




THE WILLOW FOUNTAIN SWINGS AND SWERVES, 
AND FLINGS ITS LEAF-WROUGHT SPRAY IN CURVES; 
STRANGE, SINCE THE LOVED NO LONGER STAY, 
IT HAS NOT WEl'T ITSELF AWAY. 



146 DULCE DOMUM. 

VI. 

The showers have washed the colored light 

Of rainbows down upon the place, 
The phloxes flame in red and white, 

The pansies in their violet grace ; 
The jaunty jaybird's azure flash, 
The rubies of the mountain ash, 
The dear old aster's gay cockade, 
The maples with their green parade, 
The yellow daisies prim and clean, 

The orange butternut that pays 
In golden leaves of spotted sheen 

Its early dues to Autumn days, — 
All these no weary heart can wile 

Like loving smiles from living eyes 
That light the Lord's last holy mile 

To perfect peace and Paradise ! 

VII. 

Ah, flood-wood wreck, old cider-mill ! 

With apple cheese and amber flow, 
Where used to gather round thy rill 

The boys and bees of long ago. 
How sweet new apples make the air 
As fragrance in a maiden's hair. 



THE DESERTED HOMESTEAD. 147 

I see their constellations gleam 

Like planets in a fairy's dream, 
As if the Maker should baptize 
Each new-born star He bade arise 

In rare perfume, and all should shine 

With aromatic light divine ! 

VIII. 

In silence standing on this brink 

Of desolation and decay, 
Now in this amber cup I drink 

To the dear dead and gone away. 



148 



DULCE DOMUM,, 




HU\pFA7H0RA 



THE GARDEN THERMOMETER. 



rO, a silver pulse in a crystal vein 
J And it silently ebbs and flows, 
And marks the chill of the North wind's will 
And it times the bloom of the rose. 

And it tells of snow in the spotted air, 
And it shrinkingly shows the sift 

Of frosty stars where the crimson spars 
Of the Arctic admirals lift. 

When the silver mounts in the vein of glass. 
Then the butterfly's wing'd brocade 

Shakes out of reef like a folded leaf 
And the corn ranks off in brigade. 

When the silent pulse to the Zero sinks 
Then as brave as a lord's saloon 

The nail-heads shine in the walls of pine 
Like the dew-drops under the moon ; 



149 



15° 



DULCE DOMUM. 

And the kitchen fire is an oriflamme 

And the panes of the window show 
The astral bloom and the diamond plume 

And the mimic May of the snow. 

There are fans of pearl, there are shells with rings, 

There are violets ghostly white, 
And tarns and urns and the fretted ferns 

Of the winter-time in the night. 

There is naught so cold in the Arctic zone 

As a heart that is " ten below " 
At the snowy line of the dwindling pine, 

On the glacier field or the floe. 

And no Boreal blast from its ghastly gloom 

Is as chill as the frosty-souled 
With thoughts as clear as the Windermere 

And the heart left out in the cold. 

Let us pray for hearts with an endless June 
Though the winds of the world are wild, 

No zero there nor a fever'd care 

But the blue-eyed faith of a child. 



THE MINGLING OF THE NATIONS. 



A Memory of the Centennial, 1876. 

DEAD and gone Truth's faltering lisper 
Rent the recantation robe, 
Galileo's feeble whisper 

Rings around the startled globe. 
Tremble out the joy, ye steeples, 

While your iron welkins roar, 
Met and mingled, Babel peoples 

Sundered by the seas no more. 
Met and mingled I Turban, tartan, 

Lotus Egypt, lily France, 
Moslem, German, Spaniard, Spartan, 

South Sea Isles from tropic trance, 
Lapland snow-drops, Persian roses, 

Grecian laurel, English oak, 
Erin's shamrock, land of Moses, 

Cedars where the Savior spoke ; 
Palm and pine and Judah's willows, 

Grand Brazil whose rainbows broke, 

15^ 



152 



DULCE DOMUM. 

Showering all her leaves with light, 
Arctic with his marble billows, 

Dead and pallid anthracite. 
Scotland's thistle, Scotland's Scott, 

Robert Burns and Robert Bruce 
Who bid all earth '' forget-me-not " 

And Time flings out his flag of truce ! 
Land of Hamlet, hills of Homer, 

Almond eyes and Saxon hair, 
Alps of Tell and sands of Omar, 

Ivory land and Northern Bear. 
Gliding on with Orient greeting 

See blue-trouser'd thatched Japan 
Cool with palm-leaf breezes, meeting 

Ermined Russia with a fan ! 
Palmetto, Ophyr, Oregon, 

Call the roll of nations off 
From Herr and Don to China John, 

From Malabar to Malakoff, 
Egypt ! Earth's own eldest daughter, 

Colorado, silver bride. 
One mountain-born and one of water, 

Eldest, youngest, side by side. 
In and out the halls of wonder, — 

Centennial grand the ground. 



THE MIXGLING OF THE NATIONS. 

Mingled nations passing under 

Flags of all the globe around, 
Coming, smiling, greeting, going. 
Flags above them flaming, glowing, 
Like October's frosty woods. 

Gathered like the Judgment Day, 

Like the tides in Fundy's Bay, 
Ebb and flow the Multitudes. 
And above them, ay, above them, 

Dearer than the Unicorn, 
Forty million hearts to love them. 

Fairer than the Crescent Horn, 
Like sacred fire on altar-place, 

Lily-white and red as Mars, 
Like some broad wing of angel grace 

Brightly flare the Stripes and Stars ! 
There, in clear or cloudy weather, 

Be it day or be it night. 
Ever shine they altogether. 

Stricken sparks of empire light. 
"What o'clock by time sidereal?" 

Hark, the world's gray sentries cry. 
Behold that banner blue ethereal 

And the Stars shall make reply. 



153 



154 



DULCE DOMUM. 

Over all, " Old Glory " gleaming, 

Whiter than the driven snow, 
Fairer than an angel's dreaming, 

Woven in no loom below, 
With an Olive Branch upon it 

And a Christmas Holly spray, 
Words far sweeter than a sonnet 

Written with a sunshine ray : 
Glory unto God forever ! 

Hosanna to the Lord again ! 
Battle blast the nations never, 

Peace on earth — good will to men. 



WELCOME HOME. 



'"pHE dust of John Howard Payne, having been borne 
J- across the world, was consigned, on a pleasant day in 
June, 1883, to its final rest in the District of Columbia. 
The spirit that christened him John Howard, after the great 
philanthropist, seems prophetic, for it named the boy, that 
"father of the man," who in the coming time should write 
out, in simplest household words, the heart of the home- 
loving world, and so prove himself the gentle lover of the 
bond and the free. The incident by the Rappahannock river 
strikingly shows that " Sweet Home," of all earthly melo- 
dies, is the master song. 



155 



156 



DULCE DOMUM. 



.r -3&-r"^' 




WELCOME DEAR HEART ANIJ TAKE THV REST 
AT "HOME, SWEET HOME " FOREVER. 



WELCOME HOME. 



OH, dews and flowers of splendid June, 
With pearls and garlands grace his tomb 
Who taught Milan's dear Maid the tune 
That times the whole world's loving feet, 
To which all golden hearts shall beat, 
Where'er they wait or weep or roam, 
Of "Home, sweet Home" forever. 

O'er mariner on the Spanish main, 

The tattered miner in his tent, 
The wanderer on the throbbing plain 
Where yellow noons by simoons wheeled 
Smite Desolation's flinty shield, 

A second Bow of Hope is bent 

In " Home, sweet Home " forever. 

And when to bugle and the blast 

Where battle turns the lilies red, 
Through flashing columns standing fast 
The soldier cuts the narrow lane 
That lets him through to Glory's fane 

IS7 



158 DULCE DOMUM. 

He hears an angel overhead 

Sing "Home, sweet Home" forever. 

The weary traveler who waits 

In twilight's dim and drear abode 
The opening of the Pearly Gates 
That some faint ray or friendly star 
May shine abroad through doors ajar 
And show his fading eyes the road, 
Sighs " Home, sweet Home " forever. 

A camp of Blue, a camp of Gray, 

A peaceful river rolled between, 
Were pitched two rifle shots away. 
The sun had set the West a-glow, 
The evening clouds were crimson snow, 
The twinkling camp-fires faintly seen 
Across the dark'ning river. 

Then floated from the Federal band 

The " Spangled Banner's " starry strain. 
The Grays struck up their '' Dixie Land," 
And " Rally Round " and " Bonny Blue " 
And "Red and White" alternate flew, — 
Ah, no such flights shall cross again 
The Rappahannock river ! 

And then, above the glancing " beam 
Of song" a bugle warbled low 



WELCOME HOME. i^g 



Like some bird startled from a dream 

" Home, Home, sweet Home," and voices rang 

And Gra}'' and Blue harmonious sang — 

All other songs were like the snow 
Among the pines when winds are stilled, 
And hearts and voices throbbed and thrilled 

With " Home, sweet Home " forever. 
No matter what the Flag unfurled. 
Ah, DuLCE DoMUM rules the world ! 

Sweet Singer of the Song of men, 

Thou comest late to claim thine own, 

But when the daisies rise again 

Arrayed in all thy borrowed dust, 

The world will hold thy words in trust 
And Ages chant from zone to zone 
Thy " Home, sweet Home " forever. 

The Memnon murmured song, they thought 

When dawning day his lips impressed, 
And flushing marble warmed and caught 
The sweet Ionic of the Greek; — 
Ah, truer far thy lips shall speak 
Nor wait the touch of sun or stars. 
For thee the night-time has no bars — 
Welcome dear Heart and take thy rest 
At " Home, sweet Home " forever. 



